Standing on Solid Ground
by AriaAdagio
Summary: Post Some Kind of Miracle. MerDer. Following the ferry arc, Derek is paralyzed by his fears of losing Meredith, while Meredith grapples with the consequences of giving up. A story about one second, and how that second changed everything.
1. Chapter 1

She woke up with his arms around her midsection. The moments that followed were sweet, when she was still opening her eyes, still establishing that she was, in fact, awake, and the world was still clouded in the mushy darkness of recent dreams. His soft breathing fell against the nape of her neck like a caress, like waves lapping at a shore. It was peace. And it was warm. And she never wanted it to end. 

Of course, the perfection didn't last. It never did. She smiled and shifted as the pins and needles began to invade, letting her know that she hadn't moved in far too long and that this hospital bed was far too small for two adults, no matter how petite she was.

"Derek," she whispered, her voice still raspy from the intubation.

"Mmm." The embrace squeezed tighter for a moment and then relaxed again, making her feel oddly like a teddy bear. She felt warm skin on the back of her neck, much warmer than her own. She was still a bit chilled. 

"Derek," she said again, reaching down to rub his forearm. "Re-spoon?"

"Mmm?"

"Circulation. Failing."

A snuffle. Even breathing finally gave way to a more wakeful sigh. "Oh," he said, his voice thick and dark and serious. His grip around her relaxed, and the bed rocked as he flipped onto his other side. 

She shifted in turn and slipped her arms around him as he had done for her. "Thanks," she sighed into his neck and let her eyes drift shut again. Dying was exhausting. 

She had almost fallen back into a rather pleasant dream when she felt him shudder in her grasp.

She cracked open her eyelids, but saw only the blur of his shirt collar. "Derek?" 

His entire torso hitched as he sucked in a breath, and then another. A soft groan curled through him. She thought she heard him whisper, "Oh, God," before he began to tremble and suck in breaths so fast it sounded like he was trying not to suffocate. 

Dread plunged through her. "Derek?" she asked.

"I'm..." he mumbled. "I'm okay." 

"No, you're not..."

A moment of stillness hung there like the last moment of tension before a spring snapped. And suddenly he was falling to pieces in her arms.

"Hey," she said, running fingers through his hair. Trying to hold onto him as though it were the only thing that kept him from puddling into the mattress. "Hey, hey," she said. She inhaled the scent of him. "It's okay..."

She didn't ask him what was wrong. "I'm here," she assured him. "I'm here, I love you, and it's okay."

Her skin felt tight and brittle, like it was stretched over her bones. And the chill she'd felt since she'd woken began to throb and pulse, deep in the marrow. "I'm so sorry, Derek. I'm here. I'm okay."

His hands slid over hers, stilling her. He sighed. "Meredith." He said her name like a prayer. Like she was the only thing holy in his entire life. Like the word itself was bliss. He always said her name that way. 

The chill she felt began to fade. She kissed his neck and inhaled the scent that was uniquely him, musky and sweet. She let her fingers toy with the hair near his temple.

"Meredith," he said again.

She held him for a long time before the even rhythm of sleep took him back into its grip and for a long time after that. But somehow, it didn't seem that long at all. 

When the nurse came in to check on her for early morning rounds, Meredith woke quickly, not unlike a blind shade released with an unforgiving snap. Derek remained asleep. She found that troublesome, since he was normally the light sleeper, and it was she who could sleep through a vacuum cleaner. But she let it go. He was tired.

"Good morning, Dr. Grey," the floor nurse said with a smile as she rapped her hand on the doorjamb to announce her presence. 

"I'm Francine, and I'll be checking in on you today. How are you feeling? Anything I need to note for your doctor?" the nurse asked.

"I still feel a bit wiped. My throat hurts. And I have a headache. All in all, I think I'm fine, though, all things considered," Meredith said, stretching as much as she could manage, but still relishing the warmth of him.

She settled back in and threw her arm over Derek's side. Fine was an understatement. Upon a brief self-assessment, she discovered that she had somehow picked up an inner peace that was more than okay. 

Francine nodded. "That sounds fairly normal, but I'll note it on your chart." The nurse worked around Derek with a conspiratorial grin. "Wore Dr. Shepherd out, eh?"

Meredith smiled, but didn't comment, resisting the urge to bury her face into the back of his neck until she had a bit more privacy. She expected Derek to wake up as the nurse moved around, but he didn't.

Francine left, writing on her clipboard as she went, leaving Meredith in the dark once more. 

She listened to the soft sounds of Derek's breath. In and out. In and out. Each inhalation filled her embrace, and each exhalation left her abandoned and wanting. She laid her cheek against him. He felt so warm and alive. Even through his rumpled sweater and shirt, she imagined the blood rushing under his skin. He smelled of musk and just a faint memory of aftershave, probably left on his clothes from yesterday morning. She'd watched him put it on while he asked her about the incident in the tub.

The incident. That made it sound so silly…

She winced.

She didn't want to move. Didn't want the morning to keep advancing. She just wanted to rest there, next to him, basking in him. In the sudden calm. 

It was good to be there. Breathing. No inner voice whispering poisonous words of self-deprecation to her. It was gone now. All of it. And it was lovely, good.

Derek stirred. He loosed an annoyed, overtired moan, and rose to a sitting position. He scrabbled his hands across his face and looked at her with blinking, bloodshot eyes. He drew his watch up to his face and squinted at it, but apparently gave up. 

"What time is it?" He sounded as though he existed on the bare edges of sentience. Rawness held his tone in a vice, bringing it an octave lower.

"5:30 AM, Derek. You slept straight through morning rounds," she said. She smiled as he worked around the bed railing and stumbled onto his feet. He flailed for a moment, gripping the side rail on the bed to retain his footing.

His hair stuck out in every direction, curls flying loosely from his face as though a torrential wind had swept them away from his scalp. He ran a hand through them, but they shot back out as soon as he lowered it, leaving him with a bedraggled countenance enhanced by the thick forest of stubble across his cheeks and the dark, fleshy circles under his eyes. He crunched up his face in a wince and blinked in rapid succession, as though the dim fluorescent light of the room had speared him. 

She gave him a worried glance as she settled onto her back with a sigh, happy at the sudden increase in space, but sad at the loss of him. And without him there as a distraction, the laundry list of discomforts she had listed for Francine came roaring back. She still felt rotten. Her throat hurt. Her chest ached. The IV they had stuck in her arm itched. 

And she really wanted him to stay. His absence left her colder than she liked.

"Haven't slept in a twin-sized bed all night since I was eight," he grumbled as he worked out a crick in his neck and began to worry at the juncture of skin just above his clavicle. "Twin-sized beds seemed much bigger back then."

Meredith laughed, relieved that he had at least found some humor in the situation. "Unless you've left out some rather interesting life details, I doubt they had another person in them either."

The sleep muzz on his face finally cracked a little, giving way to a faint smile. "Coffee. Do you want anything?" He shambled toward the door.

Just you. "Some ice chips? My throat is killing me." 

He nodded and went off on his mission. The few people in the hallway that she could see gave him a wide berth, and she couldn't help but laugh. Derek, the most annoying, refreshing, happy, effervescent morning person she had ever met, brought to his cheerful knees. But the laugh curdled and died on her lips. It wasn't really that funny, given the circumstances. 

Not really.

She waited for him, half expecting him to take some detours, possibly give himself time to clear his head. But he was back in less than five minutes, coffee cup in one hand, Dixie cup in the other. He pulled up a chair and handed her the Dixie cup, then leaned back to begin inhaling his coffee. 

She watched his Adam's apple bobble along his throat as he took in long, desperate, sloshing gulps of caffeine. He said nothing. 

"I hope that wasn't hot," she said, only half-joking, as she picked at the ice in the cup and pulled one of the smaller chips into her mouth. 

He shook his head and his lips peeled back from his teeth in disgust. "It's cold, actually. I think this might be yesterday's. I just grabbed what was left."

Meredith frowned. "The coffee cart downstairs always has warm coffee..." 

He shrugged. "Didn't want to go downstairs."

He put the cup on the stand beside the bed and stared at it for several moments before he dropped his gaze to his lap. He sat hunched over, tired, unkempt, as though his spine were curling inward. His eyes blinked, glacial and slow, as if he were contemplating going back to sleep right there. 

"Derek, are you all right?" she asked as she sucked on the ice chip. It felt heavenly in her mouth. Her throat was already beginning to thank her.

All semblance of morning fog washed away from him as he lifted his head and he gave her one of his patented, McDreamy smiles. But it faded, cracked at the corners of his lips. And it didn't quite meet his eyes. Remorse and pain clawed at the edges of his features. The smile gave way and his lower lip trembled, just a bit, barely even at all. Maybe it really hadn't.

"Meredith," he said, again like a prayer, like he was grasping at the only thing he knew was real. 

A tear escaped his left eye. He sniffed, and wiped it away with his hands. He took two deep breaths and managed to calm himself down. He smiled again and held it firm. He took her hand in his. He caressed each knuckle, stared at her palm with surgical scrutiny.

"You don't have to tell me," she said after a few moments, but it only set him off again.

"Sorry," she said. "Sorry!" She felt suddenly like she was trying to hold a broken eggshell together and she wondered why she had ever, even for a second, considered not fighting anymore.

Not fighting was the most stupid idea she had ever had.

Seriously.

"I should be happy," he said. 

"But..." She stared at him. 

"I should be happy," he repeated, and then he looked up at her with a ghost of a smile and a small nod. The words began to dribble from his lips, slowly at first, and then he gained momentum. "Mere, you can swim. I pulled you out. Of the water. You were twenty feet from the pier. There were stairs. Right there. And I know you can swim. I know you can swim, and I love you so much that when I think about that, that you can swim, I get so scared I can barely function. You can swim, Mere. And you didn't. You didn't. And I have no idea how that makes me feel. I should've--"

"Derek, stop," she snapped, horrified at how quickly he'd been reduced to a messy pile of doubt. She put her palms on his stubbly cheeks and pulled his tortured gaze to her.

She'd done this.

She'd done this to him.

Stupid, Mere. Really stupid.

His lip began to tremble again as she held his gaze in her own.

"Stop right there," she snapped again. He blinked. "Derek, I got knocked into the water by a patient. I was shocked. The water was cold. I was tired. Maybe a little depressed. Maybe for a second, I wanted it. Maybe I did. Okay, I did. I did want it, then. But do you have any idea how utterly stupid it makes me feel now, looking back on it?" 

He shuddered, as though each of her words was a slap in the face. It wasn't helping. Her thoughts raced off a cliff and broke on the rocks below. This was the part where he was supposed to smile and snap himself back together, because she'd admitted to him what she didn't even want to admit to herself. He was supposed to understand.

But there he was, breaking a little more every time she opened her mouth.

"I've never been more grateful for anything in my life that I woke up," she said, firmly, definitively, enunciating everything so that he could see she really meant it. Or, at least, she hoped he would see that she really meant it. 

He closed his eyes and leaned into her hands. "But--" he protested.

And so she began again. She would fix this. Now, before anything could fester. Because he was the king of festering emotional wounds. 

"There is nothing that you could have or should have done differently," she said. "You were there for me to the point of annoyance. My predicament is entirely of my own making. And did I mention how utterly stupid it makes me feel that I didn't let you get through to me?" 

He shook his head. "No, Mere, that's not what I... It isn't! For three hours yesterday, Meredith, you were dead. You were dead, and I couldn't do a damned thing about it. And then they told me you were okay, and I was so relieved I felt sick, and then I felt sick from feeling so relieved. Your mother, Meredith. Maybe there was something else I could have done, but I couldn't--"

And that was what it all fell down to. He hadn't been able to save her. He hadn't been able to save her mother. And as the arrogant, god-complex surgeon that he was, she had done the worst thing she ever could have done to him. She'd made him feel useless. The very essence of his soul, that he could save lives, she'd shattered.

How scary must it be for him to realize how much power she held over him? It made her tremble, but she didn't let the fear take her.

She would fix this.

"No. No. She was a sick woman. Her heart was failing. And there's nothing you could have done for her that you didn't do. You are, Derek, you really are my knight in shining whatever. You've pulled me up from drowning twice now, and that's only counting the literal. I have you, and I have my friends. I have a family that has nothing to do with my screwed up father or my mother. And I'm sorry it took a near-death experience to figure out how stupid I've been. I really, really am."

He stared at her until the silence became unbearable, almost hard for her to breathe in. The stiff ache in her chest persisted.

"And I'm even sorrier for what I put you through," she added, words falling from her lips in a sudden need to fill the void between them. She'd done this. It was her fault. And she knew it.

He remained quiet, took her hands from his face and into his own, began worrying his fingers at her palms again. He stared at them for what seemed like eons of stillness. 

And then he brought the back of her left hand to his lips, and he kissed it. "Okay," he said. He smiled then, smiled at her, and it made her melt, because this time it crept across his whole face, gave him a glow that said he really meant it. That he was okay, despite the exhaustion that still hung deep and bitter and haunting in his gaze. 

"Okay?" she asked.

He nodded. "Yeah."

"Will you lie with me some more?"

With a smirk, he worked his way back around the side rail and collapsed next to her. The bed dipped under his weight. Her side began to heat up again where it pressed into his. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to him, tightly at first, and then he loosened up some. He sighed.

"I knew you had an ulterior motive," he said, but there was no bite of sarcasm in it despite his earlier expression, as if he was genuinely glad she'd asked, because as much as she needed it, he needed it too. Needed to enjoy the closeness and nothing else, just for a while. 

She felt his breathing caress the space over her ear, felt the feather-light brush of his fingertips as they wandered up and down her bicep.

She let the lull hold the space between them hostage. She inhaled softly, and thought an inward thank you. Thank you, she thought again. Seriously.

"Derek?" she asked.

"What?"

"As soon as I get out of here, I really, really want to have sex with you."

For a moment, a pin could have dropped on the floor, and she would have heard it as loudly as an avalanche, or maybe twenty simultaneous code-blues. And then he snorted. "I'm shocked. Shocked, Dr. Grey, that you would think I have such base, carnal--" 

She jabbed her elbow back. He grunted at the impact, managed to hold still long enough that she began to wonder if maybe she'd hurt him, and then he broke into hearty laughter. It was a beautiful sound.

"I guess," he managed between pants, "I guess that'd be okay."

She smiled. "Good."


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's notes: Well, Standing on Solid Ground was originally meant to be a one shot story. But I love the ferry arc. I really do. Because it started opening a whole big can of worms for Meredith and Derek that I just can't resist tackling. So, I continued writing. And so, Standing on Solid Ground grew, and is still growing. Derek and Meredith have a ton of stuff to work out, and I hope to slowly attack things as this story progresses. I'm changing the rating to M, because this part seriously needs the upgrade. I hope you continue to enjoy the story! **

**I will not lie, however. This story is not complete as of the posting of this part. I'm several parts ahead, still writing madly, but it is not complete. I will do my best to complete this story. I hate, hate, HATE leaving things like this unfinished, and I have yet to post something I didn't finish. But you have been duly warned. Please continue to review if you do read. I thrive on both negative and positive criticism, and appreciate both equally :)**

* * *

The stoplight turned red. Not the split second between yellow and red, or just yellow that would soon be red. Definitively red. The kind of red that said stop and meant it. It was the kind of red that right now, at this moment, he absolutely hated beyond all word or reason. 

Meredith snorted. She sat in the seat beside Derek wearing her favorite ratty Dartmouth t-shirt and a pair of black knit pants. Derek spared her a glance, only to find her staring back at him, her eyes twinkling with untold mischief. She twirled a strand of her long hair around her index finger, biting her lower lip as she did so. Her lips quirked in a hint of a grin. The skin around her eyes crinkled up with the laughter she wasn't releasing.

"What?" Derek asked.

"This is the third light you've done that at," Meredith said, gesturing vaguely in Derek's direction.

The radio echoed in the cabin of the car, tinny, barely above silent. Some eighties tune that he recognized, but couldn't name, played just under the realm of Derek's awareness. Neither of them bothered to turn it off, nor did they turn it up.

"Done what?" he asked as the song went into full ballad mode.

"The steering wheel gripping thing," Meredith said. "It's not going to jump off the dashboard, you know."

Derek opened his mouth to protest, but instead looked down at the steering wheel. He found his hands clenched there, so tightly that his knuckles had faded from flesh-colored to a pale shade of white. And, now that he actually noticed this, thanks to Meredith, they started to ache as well. He yanked his hands back as though they had been branded, only to have Meredith giggle at him. Giggle, of all things.

He ran a hand through his hair and sighed. The light remained red.

She stopped laughing. "Are you okay?" she asked.

He tore his eyes from his stoplight vigil and grinned as he met her gaze. "I'm taking you home from the hospital."

"You are." She nodded. "Right now."

She started fiddling with her hair again. She would grab a strand with her thin, spindly index finger, and worry it into a spiral, only to let it fall loose, and then she would start over again. Her lips, slightly parted, showed the barest hint of her teeth behind them. Teeth that he knew could bite, and nip, and-- He reached down and turned off the heater. The radio became louder as the sound of the rushing air ceased. He turned that off too. He flipped down the sunshield, though the sun had almost set. Nothing seemed to help with the sudden flush of heat.

She looked sexy sitting there in her ratty Dartmouth shirt and her ratty knit pants, playing with her hair that she constantly bemoaned as being ratty, though he didn't see it. It was rich, and long, and soft, and useful for running one's hands through. She looked sexy sitting there in his car at the stoplight in the evening, doing nothing but twirling her fingers. But then, she could make washing dishes look sexy. Or reading a book. Or any number of activities that didn't normally involve sex. She was the embodiment of the adjective, sexy. And she was his. Would be his.

"It's a momentous occasion," Derek said.

"It is, isn't it?" she agreed.

Light. Still red. He stopped himself from growling in frustration and turned back to her, where she still sat, that amused, twinkly look still plastered on her face. Still playing with her hair.

"Okay," he began. "Is there any way I can mention remembering the fact that you said you wanted to have sex with me as soon as you got out of the hospital without sounding like a jerk?"

She tilted her head toward the road in front of them. "It's green, Derek."

He gunned the engine, knocking them back against their seats. The roads passed far more quickly than they should have, but he couldn't bring himself to slow down. A teleporter wouldn't be fast enough. "You do, right?" he asked.

"Do what?"

"Want to have sex!" He blew out his breath in frustration. Every muscle in his body itched with unspent energy that had gathered, been gathering. He squirmed in his seat.

"Well," Meredith said. "I would like to start with a shower. I smell like a hospital."

He raised an eyebrow. She smelled perfect to him. He'd brought her that lovely lavender-scented conditioner she always liked, and she'd used it while she had stayed at the hospital. Every morning when he had come to visit after rounds, her hair had been damp and slightly curly, and the room had smelled of lavender. Lavender, and soap, and Meredith. Soft.

"A shower," he said. He turned the air conditioner on. "Instead of sex?"

"You can join me."

"Join you in the shower?" he asked. Five blocks. Just five blocks. In the corner of his eye, he saw rhythmic movement, a flutter in the dim light. Again with the hair.

"And then we can have sex," she said.

"After?"

"Or during!"

"Why not both?"

"Stop sign, Derek," she snapped.

He slammed on the brakes and the blur that was the world came back into harsh focus. Some tall, athletic-looking guy on a bike rode past, his bell blaring as he went. A dog barked. Trees moved and swayed to a soft breeze. The sun cast long, glancing shadows on everything, from mailbox to flowerbed, making the area seem dark, magical, and surreal.

"Sorry." He took a deep, cleansing breath. The air conditioner made his fingers icy cold, numb, hard to move. He took his hands from the steering wheel and clenched them until he felt his nails digging into his skin, and then clenched harder for good measure. "Sorry," he said again.

Meredith frowned, reaching over to touch his shoulder with the hand that had been playing with her hair. His muscles twitched where her fingers brushed him. He clenched his jaw. She pulled back. God, he felt like a rutting fool. A teenager on a hormone binge. A sex addict.

"We can't have sex if we don't make it home in one piece," she whispered, serious, concerned. Her brows furrowed and she gave him an apologetic stare. "I didn't mean to tease you so badly."

"I know," he said. Deep breaths. Deep breaths. Deep breaths didn't seem to be helping. "I know, I'm just..."

He was just what? Horny? The word sounded so inappropriate to describe the desperation he felt. It was like he had to keep moving, keep thinking, because if he stopped, if he let the world stop, for even a moment, he would either explode or take her right there in the car. Horny wasn't it. Wasn't it at all. That word implied a casual need, one that could be joked away or sated, which certainly wasn't this. This wasn't casual at all. The tension that had been coiling in his gut since they'd gotten into the car would be his slayer if he didn't do something soon. He smelled the lavender in her hair, the lotion she used for moisturizer, cinnamon if he wasn't mistaken, and the soft, sweet aroma that was Meredith and Meredith alone. The bitter scent of freon pumped out by the air conditioner couldn't mask any of it, not one bit. The odors mingled, curling down the back of his throat, where scent becomes taste, and the blur between senses becomes muddled. His pants felt tight, like they were constricting around him. The denim of his jeans felt like sandpaper on his skin. The air he took into his lungs didn't quite seem to be enough. He felt giddy and frantic and drowning all at once. And he wanted her.

There was no reason. No word to define it.

He. Just. Wanted.

Her.

"Me too," she said. She made a point of putting her hands in her lap. Away from her hair.

A horn honked somewhere behind them, and he started. He felt like his stomach was dropping into his shoes. He squeezed a panicked breath out of his chest. And then he inhaled deeply, only to get beset with the soft scent of lavender. Again. He swallowed against the onset of dizzying want and forced himself into the here and now. The here and now where the person behind them was getting angry. The here and now where he was driving a car down a street. Not making love to Meredith. Not taking--

The gray sedan behind them flicked its lights on and off. Derek blinked against the hard glare and caught a view of a frumpy-looking woman with bifocals the size of saucers flipping them off in the rearview mirror before she pulled her car out and went around. He sighed. This here and now. Where they were still sitting at the stop sign, whittling away the seconds, creating a pile of so much wasted time.

All because he couldn't get his brain on straight.

Derek shook his head and pushed down on the accelerator after ticking his gaze to the left and the right, checking for oncoming cars. "I need to calm down," he muttered to himself.

"Or get laid," Meredith commented.

And he lost the battle. He somehow managed to drive the last few lengths of the trip and park the car, and then they were both out and running toward the house. He fumbled with the keys. His hands shook. He couldn't stand it. The keys. Had to get the keys. Keys. Keys. Keys go in the lock. In the lock. Turn the keys.

And then he had the keys back in his hand, the door opened like a palace door presenting them to royalty, and they were inside. The warm air buffeted him, sending him into a blurry, drunken haze. He barely let her shut the door and lock it before he ran his hands up under her shirt and pushed her back against the wall. His palms slid across her smooth, warm skin, and he felt like he would die. She hadn't worn a bra.

She hissed. "Cold!"

"I'm not sorry," he said with a growl.

She arced against the wall beside the door. "They'll warm up."

"Yes."

And then he leaned down and kissed her until he had to stop to breathe, until the spots in his vision said stop, stop, stop, even as the rest of his body said go, go go. So he breathed, sucking in air in one huge draw. The soft lavender of scent of her hair swept down into his throat, and then he went for her again. She tasted like mint. He worked his tongue through the welcoming gap between her teeth. She let him enter, slid her tongue along his own, rubbing, twisting, sucking.

He bucked as she slipped her hands underneath the waistline of his jeans, her fingertips just under his navel, into the space between the unforgiving fabric and his groin, and began to worry at the buttons. She snapped them open one by painful one, until suddenly his pants were pooling at his knees, suspended in mid-fall only by the unyielding tension in his legs. He ground up against her, gyrating his hips in a vertical circle. Had to touch her. Had to feel her.

She whimpered into his mouth. It was a twisting, high-pitched sound that rattled down his spine, vibrated on his tongue, and tore him apart piece, by shaky piece. He nipped at her lip, popped up from the fray for a breath, and sank into oblivion again.

Her hands were at his hips, shoving his boxers down. Her fingers danced across the skin where the elastic of the waistband met his flesh. A shiver ran up his body and he bucked again as the skin of his groin met air, and then the soft knit of her pants as he pushed closer. She undulated against him as she kicked off one shoe and then the other. They landed with a flop somewhere behind him. She raised her hands above her head in a gesture reminiscent of a ballerina doing a twirl. He pulled her shirt up over her head and threw it to the ground. The pants and underwear, he peeled off much the same, unforgiving, without worship. They had to be gone, and as long as they ended up at her feet, he didn't care. He had to move. Had to push. Had to grind. Go, go, go.

"Are you ready?" he asked, panting. Air, he couldn't get. Air. But he needed it. He ran his lips down the side of her neck. Over her collarbone. Twisting his tongue in a long trail of salty desire.

"Always," she murmured.

He grabbed her thighs and pulled her up so that she was sitting between him and the wall. She wrapped herself around him and he plunged into her without hesitation. She was tight. And warm. And wet. And he couldn't breathe. He couldn't breathe and it didn't matter. He sucked in lungfuls of air, sucked on her skin, slid his hands up along her arms to stretch her out as he pushed up into her, further, further, to the hilt, and she rocked back against the wall with a moan.

"Derek," she said, like a prayer, like a question.

He nearly collapsed at the feel of her, withdrawing only enough to drive into her again. It was brutal. Unyielding. He couldn't stop. Didn't want to stop. He needed this. Needed to...

He ground up against her, pushed her flat against the wall. Her legs flexed around him, gripping. Her arms flew around his neck, as though she were holding on, holding on for dear life, though, whether it was his or her life, he didn't know, and it didn't matter. Her torso slammed up against him as he withdrew and plunged, withdrew and plunged. He panted. Panted. Panted. It was a slow grind, slow and jarring, for ages, slow and jarring, because he knew if he sped up, he wouldn't stop, and she wouldn't finish.

And then Meredith came. Her face scrunched up in a rictus of pleasure. "Derek, Derek, Derek," she panted as she arced into the wall. Her muscles went lax and she twitched, rocking up against him. He thrust into her one last, slow, delicious, painful time, holding her up until she was in control again, and then he allowed himself to go, go, go like his body had demanded.

He drove at her, pushing, wanting, needing, until he couldn't see her anymore, couldn't breathe, couldn't think straight in a sky is falling, world is gone, am I dying sort of way. There was nothing but the feeling. The feeling of her tight and wet and slick and clenching around him. Clenching. "Mere," he mumbled. "Meredith."

She sucked on the skin of his neck. His heart thudded in his ears, in his chest. And then he was gone, careening over the cliff he'd been climbing since he'd gotten into that car.

He released into her, and his legs nearly gave out. He let out a moan that sounded almost inhuman to his ears, wailing, distorted, strange, like someone dying of agony, and yet it. Felt. So. Good. Several seconds passed. He spilled the last of himself into her and stood there, panting, unable to speak, unable to do much more than make sure he stayed upright. Because if he stopped thinking about it, he'd probably fall. And falling was bad.

"Holy crap," Meredith said, her voice hoarse and strange sounding. As though she had just been shouting. Shouting too much. She swallowed once. Twice. She let her head flop onto his shoulder as she panted. Her fingers worried at the hair on the nape of his neck. Her breaths fell against his shirt, but the warmth seeped through, and he suddenly found himself wishing they'd managed to take the damn thing off before they'd started.

He leaned over top of her and rested his forehead on the wall, taking in heaving breath after heaving breath. The wall was cold. His throat hurt. His shirt was soaked through with sweat.

"Yeah," he agreed, though his voice sounded whispery, strained, and stale. Had he been shouting too? He hadn't thought he'd been shouting.

Every muscle in his body felt like it was melting. He got his footing back completely and set Meredith down, pulling out of her as he did so. His breathing started to come without a thought being dedicated to it, rather than him having to force every inhale.

"That was..." she said.

"Yeah," he said.

For a long moment, they stared at each other, just stared. Her hair sprayed out from her scalp in disarray. Natural blush peppered her cheeks and neck and chest, accenting her smooth, freckled skin with a pinkish tone. She was beautiful. Exquisite. And his.

She smiled. "Wanna go again?"

"Oh, yes," he said. "How about that shower?"

She took off, thudding up the stairs, and there was a tangle as he fought with his shoes, his pants, his shirt... She giggled, somewhere upstairs, and, finally free of everything, he took off after her.


	3. Chapter 3

He sat in the dark in the on-call room on the bottom bunk, his back against the wall, knees tucked up to his chest where he held them in a vice grip. The thermal blanket on the bed had rumpled up in disarray when he'd sat down and scooted to the back. The pillow had slipped back behind the crack between the mattress and the wall. 

Beyond the door, orderlies, doctors, and nurses ran this way and that, attempting to cope with the sudden influx of patients. They shouted. Get this lab. Take him to CT. Who ordered this? Where's my paperwork? Their voices echoed as though from a long distance. Footsteps shuffled up and down the hall, patter, patter, patter. Some of them came within feet of the door, rumbling, pounding, reveling in the chaos, the adrenaline. Wind from each passing shook the door, and the crack of light at the base shivered and blinked like the flicker of a candle.

He didn't know what time it was. But he knew it had been too long. It had been too long when Ellis Grey had coded, but no one had come to get him yet, and so he had hid. Hid from resounding truth of Meredith's mother's body. Hid from Meredith. Hid from everyone who might be looking for him to tell him she was dead, that his Meredith was dead. And that had been a long time ago, when he'd hid, even if the minutes had glutted on his pain and stretched to the point of torture. It had been a long time ago. Too long.

Still, he waited, some small part of him believing that if they never got the chance to tell him, then it wouldn't be true, wouldn't be real. And who would find him in there, sitting in the dark, alone, when the halls outside were in such fractured chaos? He'd chosen one of the rooms closest to the fray. Who would notice one closed door in such a giant mess? Who would notice one small voice of pain in a sea of grievers?

His pager went off, but he didn't look at it, didn't want to look at it. He blinked against the sudden blur of tears. They stung, collecting in droves before they spilled over his bottom eyelids and tore down his cheeks. He blinked again and more came. And more. And more. He didn't wipe them away. The wetness pooled at the edges of his cheeks, gathering, gathering, before it surrendered to gravity and landed on his jeans with a hollow drip, drip, drip.

This was his fault. He never should have let her come to work today. Drowning yourself in the bathtub wasn't normal, not even fake drowning. He should have known and should have forced the issue. Technically, he was her boss. He was her boss's boss. If he had wanted her to take the day off, he could have made her, could have made Dr. Bailey let her off. He should have talked to Miranda. She would have understood. Miranda, despite her prickly exterior, was one of the most compassionate people he knew. And she would have understood. Hell, he could have taken the day off himself, cancelled all his surgeries, taken Meredith out to eat, and forced her to talk, or at least forced her to sit there while he badgered her to talk. He should have done that. That would have been smart. Then neither of them would have been anywhere near the water, and she could have told him what was bothering her so much. He should have done that. He should have. Should have. Should have.

He sucked in a breath and rocked back against the wall. It wasn't real. It wasn't real if they couldn't find him to tell him that she was gone. It wasn't real.

He tried not to think of her, lying there on the gurney, her face a pale shade of blue like wax paper. Still, so still, cold, and lifeless. Peaceful. He tried not to think of it.

The room smelled like antiseptic. Even there in the on call room. Who would use antiseptic in there? Only doctors ever slept there. Doctors and nurses. It made no sense, unless they tracked it in with them. The rest of the hospital always smelled like antiseptic. Of course the doctors would track it in. Silly to think otherwise.

He did try not to think of it, of her. He did try, tried every tangent that his addled brain could chuck in his direction, from the proper surgical stitch to reattach a button to the ferry schedule on Tuesday mornings.

But it all came back to her, lying there, her tiny, cold, blue form beneath his shaking hands as he tried to force her gelid blood through veins that didn't want it. And then to later, as she lay there, still, a tube down her delicate throat, lifeless, her face a porcelain mask of painless oblivion as the Chief pushed him away like a gnat. Shepherd, get out. Snap back, and he was under the gray crush of the water, searching for her body, rewound to live in the memory of finding her drowned and waterlogged again and again. To live in the memory of her chest crumpling under compressions again and again. Snap forward. Shepherd, get out. Get out, get out, get out. Snap back.

The door opened and he felt his heart begin to thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Until it rushed so fast that everything his ears picked up was nothing but a steady roar.

A doctor he didn't recognize shuffled in, looking tired and worn. She was a slight thing with brown hair down past her shoulders, like Meredith, but with much more rounded features, more substance to her frame. She wore small wire-rimmed glasses the shape of pennies over her pie-plate face. Her stethoscope coiled around her throat like a necklace. She took one glance at Derek, said a quick, awkward, "I'm sorry," and left.

He let out a breath as the roar became a subtle pounding, back in the peripheral of his mind again. He let the noise quiver there, away from consideration, waiting to rear up again like the tremolo of strings in a horror movie before a sudden fright. Fear. Collecting. Building. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.

"Has anyone seen Dr. Shepherd?" somebody shouted in the hall with a male voice, deep and rich and concerned, haughty, but not smooth like Burke, more grating. Mark. Why did it have to be Mark? He didn't want it to be Mark. Anyone but Mark.

He didn't think he would be able to stand it if Mark was the one that told him that Meredith was dead. Mark had stolen so much from him already. It would feel like he was stealing Meredith, too, irrational though it was. He didn't think he would be able to handle it. He didn't.

His beeper went off again, shrill and piercing. He ripped it from his waist and threw it at the wall. The pager hit the surface with a thud and cascaded to the ground. There was a brief, hollow crack, the distinct sound of hard plastic breaking, several little plinks, and then nothing. Nothing at all.

He wanted to stay, wanted to stay there in the dark just a little longer. Just a little longer, alone, outside the bubble where Meredith was dead, in his own fortress of terror-laden denial. Where they couldn't find him and couldn't tell him what he didn't want to hear because he was too busy hiding and fearing it. Outside the bubble. On his own. Praying.

He cried. Not just sniffles or latent weeping. He actually cried, now that no one was around to tell him to stop, to hold it together. He hadn't cried since his father had died when he was ten. Each breath ripped through his torso like it was his last. Each breath made him shudder. His chest ached with the effort of it. The effort of breathing, of crying, of grieving. It was exhausting, and it tore him to the marrow of his bones, but at the same time, he was beyond sleep, beyond reason.

The door opened again, creaking as it swung in along its arcing path. A shaft of light bisected the room, and the roar of the outside blasted into the silence. Voices that had been muffled and distant shrieked in his ears. The cool breezes of people passing by in the chaos buffeted his arms, his side, ruffled his hair. He didn't look up. Couldn't look up. The door shut again, parting him from the morass of voices and bustle beyond, and all he could hear now was the soft pat of feet moving with care across the tiled floor.

A small, round body sat down next to him, silent. The mattress sank under the additional weight, the springs underneath squeaking in protest. He stared at the dark blur of his jeans, his forehead pressed against his knees. If he didn't look up, it wasn't real. It wasn't real if he didn't look up.

The world tilted, and he found himself, knees and all, wrapped in her arms, knowing it wasn't in any way professional, and not caring in the slightest. "Miran..." He sucked in a breath. "Miranda."

"I'm so sorry, Derek," she said, her voice wavering with her own grief.

The bubble popped, and reality came bursting through the debris.

* * *

He woke up with a weird, inhuman sound curdled in his throat, part choke, part gasp, part sob. He blinked away the muzz of sleep, scrubbing at his face with his hands. His stubble scraped at the skin of his palms, harsh, painful, and when he peeled his hands away, they came back slippery with sweat. Nothing stirred. If he could just stop shaking, it would be all right, he concluded. But for some reason, his muscles refused to cooperate, and so he trembled, trembled with the weight of the nightmare, the nightmare that still clawed at the edges of his awareness, clawed, and tore, and rent, like a photograph pasted on his mind's eye, indelible, immortalized.

Eyes wide, he turned on his side and stared at Meredith's slender profile, warm, soft. Her skin glowed with the light of oncoming dawn that filtered through the window blinds. He took a deep breath and moved closer to her, closer. She snored, but he found, for once, that it was the most soothing aria ever sang. He listened for a long time. He didn't dare touch Meredith for fear of waking her up, but he moved as close as he was able without brushing up against her.

Meredith was fine. She was fine. She lay right there, right in front of him, close enough that he smelled the lavender in her hair, even so long after she had showered, close enough that he felt warmth wafting from her freckled skin, close enough that her snoring seemed almost to vibrate in his own chest, as if the noise were rumbling from him and not from her. And still, he shook.

The dream, so close to how it had really happened, so close, left him feeling nauseated, hollow, and cold. He remembered the harsh sound of Mark attempting to hunt him down when Derek had wanted nothing more than to hide from what he had begun to assume was inevitable. He remembered smashing his pager to pieces. He also remembered Miranda. In reality, she had sat down and told him the good news, that Meredith was alive and that she was awake and talking with Cristina. That there didn't seem to be any brain damage, and that everything was most likely going to be fine. He had still cried, still broken down, but it had been a different kind of breakdown.

Instead of a hole being gouged in his soul, despair constricting every breath like in his nightmare, he had felt such intense relief that he had nearly hyperventilated, nearly vomited it was so overwhelming. Miranda had sat with him until he'd gotten it together, held a trash can up for him while he'd heaved, dry and empty though he had been. And then, finally, after he'd cried himself out, put himself into some semblance of a normal, sane person, he'd gone to see her.

By then they'd moved her into her own private room, and she rested in a swath of blankets. He'd watched her sleep. For many long, eternal moments, he'd watched her, marveling at the rise and fall of her chest, at how relaxed she looked, and telling himself that he would never, ever take such simple, delightful things for granted again. His heart had felt like it was going to explode when she finally opened her eyes and turned to look at him. So many emotions had been churning in his stomach. So many thoughts had been rumbling around in his head, that all he'd managed to do was to say a reverent, "Hey." But it had been enough.

She was alive. Meredith was alive. The awful thing he'd dreamed, this awful falsity where Miranda had brought him the horrible news was his own imagination. It wasn't going to happen. Couldn't happen. Could never happen. Meredith was fine, he tried to tell himself. But some part of him wasn't listening.

After several long, painful moments, he managed to calm himself down, just a little. Enough to breathe evenly again. Enough to stop the tremors. He shivered as the sweat evaporated off his skin.

He glanced at the alarm clock. 4:00 AM. Not really late enough for him to get up, but late enough that he could sort of justify it, and he really didn't want to go to sleep again, not after that horrific dream. When he made a point of commuting with Meredith, he'd adjusted to her grueling intern schedule and went in at the crack of dawn with her, a small price for the added companionship. This would have been more normal then. But today she wasn't working. She had the week off. He had hoped to enjoy a few days of sleeping in, making his own hours again, waking up with her when it was actually light out and not just hinting at dawn, but for today it seemed that plan wasn't in the cards.

He carefully pushed the covers back and sat up. His vision spotted with the sudden elevation change. He hadn't really eaten since lunchtime yesterday, though now that he thought of it, he didn't really feel hungry now, which was odd, considering how much energy he had expended in the last twelve hours. He and Meredith had spent the entire evening making love in every imaginable position in every imaginable spot. It had been exquisite, wonderful, and exhausting.

He stood, wincing. Everything ached and twinged. Muscle groups he'd long forgotten protested with bitter screams as he went over to the dresser, pulled out a pair of black sweatpants and a navy t-shirt, and put them on. The fleece hugged his damp skin, soft and warm.

He walked out of the room, taking one last, long look at Meredith before he went. She lay there still, snoring, in a deep, calm sleep. He left, closing the door as softly as he could behind him.

The hall was silent, but clinks and clanks filtered up from the kitchen downstairs. The smell of something cooking, something with batter, billowed through the hallway. He inhaled, letting the warm, homely odor fill him, and continued downstairs, his bare feet thudding on the steps, one after the other.

Izzie stood in the kitchen behind the counter, a spatula balanced precariously in one hand while she read from a red-checkered, hardback book. She had a yellow mixing bowl in front of her, full to just short of the brim with a pale, yellowish batter. The waffle iron rested on the countertop to her left. The red light glowed, indicating that a waffle was cooking.

She looked up when he entered. Her eyes narrowed. "Hello, Dr. Shepherd," she said.

Derek raised an eyebrow as he took a seat on the stool across from her. "You know," he said, "You can call me Derek outside of work."

She shook her head. "No, I can't. I'm distancing."

"Distancing?"

She nodded. "Yes, distancing. Distancing from the fact that you had sex in the hallway yesterday. That you, my boss, had naked, noisy, gross sex in the hallway while I was stuck here in the kitchen the whole time, listening to it. Distancing from the fact that, while you, my boss, who, on a personal level, I barely know, continued to have naked, noisy, gross sex upstairs in the shower, and then in your bedroom, and who knows where else, I actually bothered to put your clothes in the laundry, mostly because they were on top of Meredith's, and it was my turn to do her darks and lights, but that's beside the point. Yes, I'm distancing, Dr. Shepherd." She waved the spatula at him.

Derek opened his mouth. And closed it. "Okay..." he said, after a long, painful silence.

He hadn't thought Izzie was home yesterday when he and Meredith had arrived. Truthfully, it hadn't even occurred to him to wonder. He'd been so overwrought with... lust. He couldn't come up with anything better to say than okay. Sorry wasn't quite appropriate since he wasn't that sorry. And he wasn't really embarrassed either. As a doctor, modesty about the human body and human body functions tended to plummet into the nonexistent.

The waffle iron dinged.

"Here, have a waffle," Izzie said. "I made the batter from scratch."

She dished the first waffle onto a plate with the spatula and shoved it across the countertop at him, followed by a bottle of Aunt Jemima syrup. They skidded to a stop in front of him as she poured the next batch of batter into the waffle iron.

"Thanks," he said as he went to get a fork and a knife from the utensil drawer.

He came back to the counter and stared down at the plate, but his stomach turned at the sight. He looked up at Izzie, who watched him with a curious intensity. A strange heat flushed across his face. He poured the syrup on, lightly dotting each square of the waffle with it, and cut a piece off. It tasted like wet paper, and it made his stomach roil as it settled there like a solid, dead thing. He put his fork down and gave her a weak smile. "It's good," he said.

"Are you okay?" Izzie asked.

He rubbed his forehead. "I thought you were distancing."

She shrugged. "That doesn't mean I have to be a jerk."

"I'm fine," Derek said. "Just tired."

Izzie snorted. She reached up to cover her mouth with her hand, but her smile was impossible to conceal.

She was laughing. Laughing at him. He looked down at the waffle again, but for some reason, what had smelled so good when he'd come down the stairs now looked utterly revolting. His stomach churned with just the one small piece of it, made him feel sick and light-headed. And she laughed. Was it her devious plan to poison him? There'd be no noisy, naked sex if he were dead from poison.

"Why do you ask?" he said.

She regarded him for a long, interminable second. "No reason."

She was, he decided. She was trying to poison him. He pushed the plate away. "Too heavy for me this early, sorry." She gave him a look and shrugged.

The waffle iron dinged again. She flipped up the top and took out the next waffle, putting it on a clean plate. She poured a fresh load of batter into the empty waffle iron and closed it again.

The front door opened with a horrendous bang that pealed straight through his skull. He winced and ran a thumb and index finger along his brow, trying to ease the sudden ache.

"Is Meredith up yet?" Cristina asked as she trampled into the room, feet thudding loudly enough that she sounded like a miniature stampede. She wore a black pair of sweats and that red Stanford sweatshirt she wore so often whenever she came barging in at all hours of the morning.

Derek looked at her. "No, she's still asleep."

"They had gross, noisy sex all night," Izzie added.

"Oh," Cristina said.

"Here," Izzie said, her voice lifting with insipid cheer. "Have a waffle." She slid the plate where the second waffle lay in Cristina's direction.

Cristina got herself some silverware and attacked the plate without a question or a thank you. "Hey, this is great!" she said, her voice muffled as she tried to chew frantically and talk at the same time.

Derek watched, his mouth hanging slightly open in amazement as she wolfed the entire thing down in a matter of seconds. She chewed, swallowed in huge, loud dregs, and looked up. Her eyes widened as they met with his discarded plate, and she pointed to it with her fork. "Did you want that one?"

"No," Derek muttered. "Go ahead."

Cristina grabbed the plate and sucked the second waffle down, much like she had done with the first. How could so much food fit in such a tiny person, he wondered. His stomach churned at the mere thought. His tongue felt thick in his mouth, and it pulled back against his tonsils, quivering in that little precursor to vomit that always told him, get to a sink, or else.

He excused himself without word and rushed to the upstairs bathroom, where he sat for several moments, head over the toilet bowl, feeling miserable. Nothing came up, but he still felt awful. Each one of his heartbeats throbbed behind his eyes.

The downstairs door slammed so hard it made everything shake. Vertigo swirled around him like a dance partner. As he sat panting, eyes shut, letting the floor settle back into its habit of not moving when he moved, he wondered if Cristina had left, or if they had any additional visitors to the Grey House for Homeless Interns.

He knew he shouldn't be bitter. It wasn't like he'd been involved with Meredith, at least not anywhere near as seriously as he was now, when she'd rented out her spare bedrooms. But he would give anything for a night alone. Well, alone with Meredith.

His trailer, as much as he loved it, was a little too small for two people. Worse, whenever they stayed there, there was the inconvenience of the long commute, which meant she had to get up even earlier than her horrendous schedule already required. She always said she didn't mind staying there, liked it even, and he'd always been grateful for her open mind, but it was cruel to make her stay there when she had this big, beautiful house at such a convenient location. So he'd never asked her if she wanted to live there. He'd just sort of moved into the house. And life went on. He loved being with her, and that was enough. But every once in a while, things just got a little too crowded for him. At least George was gone, which also meant Dr. Torres wasn't visiting at all hours, not that he disliked her. It was just too many people.

He sucked in a breath and then another. The spinny feeling receded, but still lingered at the wispy edge of things like an afterthought, waiting for a jostle or a noise to thrust it back into the limelight.

Somebody knocked on the door to the bathroom, startling him so badly that he fell backward and bumped his head on the towel rack. He cursed as he gave up his precarious balance act and surrendered his weight to the floor entirely. The room swirled, but resettled with a blink.

"Dr. Shepherd?"

"What!" he hissed.

"I'm leaving now," Izzie mumbled through the door. "I was just wondering if you wanted a ride."

"No thanks," he said. "I'm nowhere near ready to leave."

There was a long pause, and he almost thought she'd gone when she cleared her throat. He sighed as her voice pierced through the door again. "Dr. Shepherd, are you sure you're all right?"

"Yes, I'm fine. Completely fine," he answered, though he sounded clipped and somewhat nasty, even to his own ears. He would apologize later if he ever got through this awful morning.

"Okay," Izzie said, her voice hinged with doubt.

Mushy footfalls marked her passage away from the bathroom door. Keys jingled, distant and faint, and then the door opened and shut, far more quietly than when Cristina had entered and left. Far, far off, he thought he heard a car putter to a start after several bad tries.

At least the nausea was finally gone. He stood, stripped, and hopped in the shower. He turned on the spray, wincing at the brief second the water remained cold, and then relaxed into cascading sheets of water as they became warm, soothing, and then nearly scalding. He stood there for a long time, not caring that the water heater would probably give out well before he started actually washing himself at this rate.

The door opened.

"Hey, I'm in here," Meredith said as she walked in, though it was a useless warning. It might be crowded in the Grey house, but only one person would walk in on him while he was using the shower.

Derek slid the shower door open and looked out, squinting as water leaked into his eyes and dripped from his hair. Meredith had put on a loose shirt and flannel shorts, which she, of course, still looked gorgeous in. "Good morning," he said, trying to smile, but failing somewhat. Ever the yo-yo this morning, now he almost wanted to go back to bed.

"My inner intern clock woke me up," Meredith said. "And Cristina slamming the door didn't help me go back to sleep." She grinned at him as she picked up her toothbrush, spread a dollop of mint-flavored Crest on the bristles, and began to work at her teeth with it.

Derek retreated back into the shower and started to lather up, hoping to wash off before the water ran cold.

She spat in the sink. "I don't know what I'm going to do with all this free time. Especially since everyone else still has to work."

"Well, I could take off," he offered as he ran his washcloth over his aching shoulders.

"You don't have to," she said.

"Actually, I'm not feeling all that hot today, anyway," he said. Which was true enough. And he only had one surgery scheduled today, one that was nowhere near critical.

"Sick?" Meredith asked.

He grabbed the first shampoo bottle he saw and squirted out a glob of it. He spread it through his hair, massaging his scalp.

He shrugged. "Just off."

"I know the feeling."

He paused, mid-scrub, suddenly feeling like everything was dropping out from under him. His heart plunged down, down, down. For a panicked second, his breath seized, stuck somewhere in an exhale that refused to complete, and every thought of her cold and dead that he'd spent the morning trying to forget came rumbling back. "You're feeling okay now, though, right?"

"I'm fine, Derek. Actually, I feel wonderful."

His dread slinked away and loitered at the corner of his mind, dangling a picture of her floating in the water, blue and wispy.

"Okay," he said, trying to force the thoughts of her tango with death away. He rinsed out his hair, gave himself one last once over with the shower spray, and turned off the knob just as it turned lukewarm. He swept his hair back with his hands, forcing the excess water to drip down his back, and then he slid the shower door open.

Meredith, no longer brushing her teeth, sat on the floor beside the shower stall, her back leaning up against the side. She handed him a towel without word. He took it and began to dry off.

"You want to go see the Space Needle?" Meredith asked as he stepped out. "Could be fun playing hooky on the Space Needle. I haven't been there in ages."

"Will there be kissing on the Space Needle?"

"Only if you come along," she said with a sly, lascivious grin.

He leaned forward and kissed her, deep, slow, longing, blotting out memories of her cold and dead with new, warm impressions. When he pulled back, he smiled. "Space Needle it is."

Eyes closed, Meredith licked her lips as if she were still savoring the taste of him. Her eyes slid open, slow, and a glassy haze covered her gaze, like she was drunk. She grinned back and inhaled deeply. "You smell like lavender," she said, her voice a low, sultry whisper.

"Does it work for you?" he asked.

"Oh, yes," she purred.

"Then I did it on purpose."

She laughed. He watched her as she left, felt the burning need to have her building again. Playing hooky with Meredith. Why hadn't he ever done this before?


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's Notes: Thanks to everyone who has been reading and reviewing! This part is a bit of a perspective part. Keeping tabs on the rest of the Grey's universe. As much as I love Derek and Meredith, they don't live in a bubble. I wanted to get this part up before the episode tonight. Hope you enjoy!**

* * *

Izzie stared blankly at the back of her locker as she pulled out her blue scrub top and yanked it down over her turquoise thermal shirt. Her stethoscope hung on its hook, swaying in the breeze of activity. Her clothes and shoes sat tucked and neatly folded at the bottom of the locker.

The smacks of locker doors opening and closing as all of the morning-shift interns got ready echoed through the room. She glanced up as a particularly loud slam drew her out of her detached stare. Chad, an intern she didn't really know beyond the brief words they'd exchanged at the mixer at the beginning of the year, traipsed off. She continued her sweeping gaze, looking all around her.

Cristina sat on the bench beside her, working at the laces of her cross trainers with surgical efficiency, fingers darting back and forth in tight, small movements. Alex stood over in his corner, fumbling with his pager, a perplexed look on his face. He popped the battery out and stuck it back in, still frowning. Meredith was, of course, absent.

George huddled, quiet and glowery, over at his locker, and she could practically see the raging storm cloud developing over his head. His shoulders were hunched, and his body was turned away from her, just enough to make it obvious that there was meaning in the stance. He hadn't spoken to her since the night of the ferry incident. Over a week ago.

She tried to tell herself that she was okay with it. That she had been a class-A bitch, and that he needed time to come to his senses and internalize her heartfelt apology. But a little piece of her was afraid that he wasn't interested in internalizing anything at all, and that they would never again have the friendship they'd had before.

She knew she'd been inappropriate. She knew it. It didn't help her like Callie any more, though. Callie was strange, and pushy, and new, and she was taking George away. Mostly, it was just the taking George away part that Izzie didn't like. And she knew she lashed out because of it. She couldn't help it. George was… George. And she loved him like a brother. She loved him like a brother and knew, innately, that he was making the biggest mistake of his life.

He hadn't even been able to tell Callie he loved her until after his father had died. He hadn't given himself any time to process his grief, to come to terms with it, before he'd jumped into a relationship with her again. Proposed. Suddenly, inexplicably loved her, after months of not being able to say it, not feeling it.

Love wasn't like that. It didn't just pop up out of nowhere. You either felt it or you didn't. Whether you noticed it or not was a different matter. But it wasn't something you could force, even when you really wanted it. And she was certain that he had forced it. His father had died, he'd needed comfort, and he'd forced it. Made himself believe it.

And she couldn't do a thing about it, because whenever she opened her mouth about them, George and Callie, she couldn't be Izzie the concerned, caring friend. She became Izzie the judgmental bitch, and awful word vomit -- mean, judging, high-horsed word vomit -- came spewing from her lips, unbidden and unwanted. No matter how hard she tried to stop it from happening. Because what was happening to George terrified her. Utterly terrified her.

She hated that she was judgmental. That didn't stop the gavel from coming down. But this… She knew it wasn't just irrational fear that she and George were growing apart. George didn't love Callie, and he didn't know it. And the longer he went without knowing it, the worse things would be when he actually figured it out. And knowing that fact just tore her to pieces. She didn't want George to hurt.

She shook her head. She wouldn't think about it. She wouldn't think about the chaos in her relationship with George, because nothing but angst she didn't want lay that way. She needed something else to focus on. Something else to fix. Something…

"Cristina, did you think Dr. Shepherd was acting odd this morning?" she asked, needing to fill the silence, needing it desperately. "He seemed like he was acting odd to me. He looked like he wanted to choke on my waffles. And they were good waffles. You even said they were good. You never say positive, happy things unless you mean them."

Cristina nodded, but didn't look up. "I didn't. They were. And I don't say positive, happy things. Ever."

"He spent all night having eardrum-shattering sex, over and over, and he wakes up and doesn't want waffles. Who's not hungry after good sex?" she mused. "I always need food after sex."

George slammed his locker door shut and twined his stethoscope around his neck with harsh, jerking motions. "Not everyone likes what you like, Izzie," he said.

"So, Shepherd scored? Good for him," Alex said, a smirk lifting his lips into that haughty, arrogant slant that he always seemed to wear like a fashion statement. A sexy fashion statement.

She looked around at her fellow interns in disbelief. There was a disturbing lack of communication happening here. "This isn't about me feeling hurt over rejected waffles, George. And this certainly isn't about whether Dr. Shepherd had sex, Alex," she said.

Alex shrugged, pulling his scrubs over the tight, black tank top he'd started wearing like a habit, like he knew what it did to the women who watched him in it. She started to lick her lips, but stopped as soon as she realized she was doing it. Bad, Izzie, bad, she thought.

"Then why did you bring it up?" Alex asked.

She resisted the urge to scream and rolled her eyes instead. "I just think there's something up with him, that's all."

"That seems more like something Meredith should be worrying about than you," Cristina said as she stood up, brushed her hands on her pants, and pulled her lab coat on over her scrubs.

Izzie wasn't entirely sure that she agreed. Meredith had enough on her plate right now. She'd almost died, been literally dead for over three hours. Her mother **had** died. And stayed dead. It was bound to be traumatic, and scary, and as dark and twisty as they'd already decided Meredith was, there was only so much dark and twisty a person could deal with before snappage occurred. Dealing with somebody else's dark and twisty might be just a bit too much to handle at the same time.

And the more she thought about it, the more Izzie believed something was seriously off with Dr. Shepherd. He'd always been a big breakfast person. Not necessarily a stuff yourself with waffles person, but certainly a milk and cereal fan. She'd been his roommate long enough to know that he **always** had something in the morning. He wasn't one of those people who grabbed a muffin and ate on the go either. He sat. Took the time. And ate. But he hadn't had a thing beyond the little bite of waffle. The little bite of waffle that'd made him look strangely peaky. The little bite of waffle that had been a precursor to him abandoning the kitchen posthaste.

And that said all sorts of things to Izzie. None of them good.

"So how is Meredith?" Alex asked.

"I wouldn't know," Izzie said with a shrug. "I haven't seen her since she got home from the hospital."

"Can't say I blame him."

"Blame him?"

"For having sex with Meredith all night. She did almost die, you know."

"This isn't about him having sex all night!" she cried. "God, Alex, is that all you think about?"

"I'm just saying that it's bound to mess him up a little. You think you have all the time in the world with someone, but then you blink and the time's gone." He met her eyes for a long moment, his gaze giving what he'd said a surprising, dark, personal subtext, a gift for her to unwrap, but she chose to ignore it.

"I know! I know better than any of you! And I'm just worried. For precisely that reason. That's all." And she did. She did know.

Losing the one you loved was an awful, dark, twisty labyrinth of nothing good. When she'd watched Dr. Shepherd sitting in the hallway outside Meredith's trauma room, crying and not caring who saw him, she'd known. Known how he felt.

How traumatic must it be to go through it, that heartbreak, and then have it ripped away, without resolution, before you come to terms with it? Even worse, to know that it might happen again… To live, knowing about that awful, dark, coiling, sickening grief, knowing that by loving this person who you've already almost lost, you would possibly go through it all again, moment by agonizing moment. A character in a romance novel would say it was worth it. A real person would be scared witless. Like she had been. With Denny. When he had had surgery after surgery and she had remained behind, not knowing if he'd come back.

George glared at her. "Speaking of hypocrites and relationships that moved too fast…" he said, almost as if he'd read her mind.

She slammed her hand into the locker. She would not take the bait. She would not take the bait. George was still internalizing. George was still internalizing. She inhaled and tried to calm herself.

"George, I appreciate the fact that you think I'm a judgmental bitch, but this isn't about you. It's. Not. About. You. Okay? This is about me, caring about my friend's boyfriend being messed up, because I care about Meredith, and whenever I try to worry about you instead, all I get is yelled at."

George looked down at the floor, and she couldn't help feeling a glimmer of satisfaction. She wasn't the only one in this room that was judgmental. But at least she had the decency to realize it was her own personal character flaw.

Silence followed. Alex coughed.

"So are we still on for tonight?" she asked. Subject change, stage right, she thought as she plastered a smile across her face.

"Sure, unless you cancel again," Alex said with a shrug.

Cristina nodded. "As long as you don't make me cook something. I don't do appetizers."

George muttered, "Yeah," as he fumbled with his wristwatch.

And then the awkward silence descended again. George wrestled with his lab coat, pointedly not looking in her direction.

The door to the locker room opened and Dr. Bailey walked in, staring at a clipboard in her hand, writing notes absently without looking up. And apparently unaware of the big cluster of tension and general badness she'd just walked into like a fly into the spider's web.

"Yang, Dr. Burke has asked for you on his service. Again," Bailey said, a hint of bitter disapproval in her tone.

Cristina nodded and left without protest.

Dr. Bailey continued, her gaze moving to her next victim. "Karev, I want Mrs. Johnson in room 5317 prepped for her appendectomy this morning. You'll scrub in on that. O'Malley, go see if Dr. Montgomery needs an intern today. If she doesn't, I want you at the lab, stat, to pick up the results for Mr. Blithe's urinalysis. If the results are good, we'll see about surgery options for later in the afternoon. And, Stevens, I want you downstairs in the pit." Dr. Bailey went back to her note taking, as if the matter was closed.

Normally, it would have been, but Izzie felt affronted in a way that she hadn't felt in a long, long time. Everyone had gotten surgical assignments except for her. She'd gotten used to it as her lot in probationary life. But she wasn't on probation anymore. And, in the week and a half that'd followed the ferry incident, she'd felt the desire burbling to the forefront of her awareness. She was a surgeon again. And she wanted it. She really wanted it. She even had an idea about what she wanted her specialty to be. Finally.

George and Alex filed out slowly, and the door closed behind them, but she stayed, waiting for Dr. Bailey to look up from whatever had her so engrossed. She didn't need to wait long. Dr. Bailey peered at her, an eyebrow raised, her face betraying a vaguely belligerent expression that Izzie wasn't sure she wanted to try to interpret.

"Sutures?" Izzie asked, before she lost her nerve. "Again? You know I'm not on probation anymore, right? The Chief took me off…"

"You might be off probation, Stevens, but you're still an intern, and the pit is backed up. So, pit. Scoot." Dr. Bailey looked pointedly at the door to the locker room, her eyebrows raised.

"But…" Izzie said.

"What?" Dr. Bailey said, putting her pen on the clip, as if she were giving up on this being a short conversation. "Did you have something you wanted to add?"

"Well, I was kind of hoping to work with Dr. Shepherd today," she said.

The words had popped out of her mouth before she'd realized it, and she resisted the urge to raise her hands to her mouth. This wasn't distancing. This was far from distancing. Wondering idly whether Dr. Shepherd was all right, and choosing to stick her nose into his affairs were two different things. Completely different.

What was she doing? There were plenty of other neurosurgeons on the staff she could have requested, could have asked to work with, but, no, Dr. Shepherd had been the name that'd wormed its way off her lips. She did want to see if he was all right, though, almost as much as she wanted to get in on a good neurology case. And Dr. Shepherd **was** the best at what he did. He got the best cases. He was a surgical Michael Jordan. And with Meredith out on leave, this was her chance to get some experience in without feeling like she was butting in the way of the lovebirds. So, it made sense.

Right?

"Dr. Shepherd?" Dr. Bailey said. Her incredulousness practically dripped from her. "What is it with you interns and Dr. Shepherd? You'd think spinal fluid was an aphrodisiac."

Izzie blushed. "It's nothing like that!" she rushed to explain, horrified at even the thought. That was entirely Meredith's thing. Hers alone. "After the ferry explosion, well, after my experience with the subdural bleed patient… I'd just like some more practice with neurosurgery. He's the best there is… and--"

Dr. Bailey shook her head. "Save it, Stevens."

"Excuse me? I find it a little offensive that you think my interest in Dr. Shepherd is personal—" Even though it kind of was, a small voice told her.

No, the interest wasn't romantic at all, that'd been true, but it was definitely personal. Meredith was the last friend she had at this point. She'd been there for her when Denny had died, when Izzie had lain on the bathroom floor all day, cold, in a numbed, detached shock. And now Meredith was going through things, and Dr. Shepherd seemed to be going through things, and she would be there for them. Because that was what she did as a friend. She got nosey. She couldn't be distanced.

Izzie Stevens cared. Sometimes too much.

And sometimes that just sucked, she decided as she watched Dr. Bailey watching her, a whole slew of judgment running across her face.

"He called in sick today," Dr. Bailey said. "Even if I didn't want you in the pit, Dr. Shepherd is not an option."

"Sick?" Izzie asked. A strange worry coiled in her gut. Maybe he really was sick. He hadn't seemed sick to her, though. Unsettled, yes. But not sick. She couldn't recall a single day since she'd started working that he'd called in sick, not even on the day he'd gotten divorced from his wife of eleven years. He had come in and she'd watched, between eight-million-dollar induced freak-outs, as Meredith and he had shuffled around awkwardly, smiling, each of them clueless in his and her own way.

"Yes," Dr. Bailey snapped. "As in not well. Can't say I blame him, living with you fools. So, why are we still talking?"

"What?"

"The pit. It's waiting."

"Oh."

Dr. Bailey left, not giving her the opportunity to protest any further, or revise her request to include a neurosurgeon who was actually there today. Maybe Dr. Weller. Or Dr. Krycek. She sighed. Today, it seemed, she was stuck doing stitches.


	5. Chapter 5

The windows of the old house glowed, and the sounds of laughter rumbled onto the porch and down the walk where she and Derek stood. Wind ran through the trees. The soft, bitter scent of a wood-burning fire somewhere in the neighborhood tickled the back of her throat. 

"Looks like you have a welcoming committee," Derek said.

She smiled and glanced at her watch, squinting at it in the darkness. The night neared 9:30. "Must have been a regular shift today instead of an extended one?"

Derek shrugged. "I know nothing of today's work schedule. I wasn't there, remember?"

She leaned into him, wrapping her arms around his waist. She looked up at him and tipped up on her toes to kiss him. "Oh, yes. I remember."

"You know," Derek said as she pulled back. "I think this is a good trend for you and me. We should do it more often."

"What?"

"Play hooky. Nobody ever told me how much fun it is."

"You've never played hooky before?"

"Nope."

"Not even with Addis-"

He cut her off with a kiss, and the rest of the word tumbled into the back of her throat, nowhere to go but the depths from which it had come. Her breath spun out of her, and the world tilted. He curled his arms around her, held her there as he pillaged her mouth, only pulling back when he needed to breathe.

"Never," he said, breathless, panting, flushed.

After several false starts, she managed to say, "Well, if we do it again, it will have to be on my day off. I'm an intern, remember? I don't get any leave, let alone leave to lie about the purpose for."

"True. I guess we'll have to come up with other creative ways to misbehave."

"Derek!" She swatted him.

"Meredith!" He swatted back.

They entered the house, still chuckling. Warmth, voices, and the greasy, unmistakable smell of pizza assaulted her. Her cheeks flushed with the heat, and she couldn't help but growl out a long, "Mmmm," at the smell of the cooling food. Meredith shrugged her coat off. Derek's warm hands pressed into her back as he took the coat from her. He wandered down the hall to the closet, feet padding on the floor.

Meredith glanced at the open boxes strewn around the coffee table and on the floor in the living room to the left. Alex and Izzie sat sprawled over the couch like blitzed out drapes. George sat with his back up against the chair where Callie sat. Burke and Cristina sat in the chair that mirrored George and Callie's, though Cristina was more on Burke's lap than she was in the chair. Beers were open. Everyone looked rosy, happy, relaxed.

"Meredith! Dr. Shepherd! Have some pizza," Izzie said, raising her beer bottle shakily to the ceiling in a salute reminiscent of the Statue of Liberty. Her voice was slurred, but only slightly. Izzie looked up at the bottle for a moment as if it were fascinating, and then brought it back down to take a swig.

"Nobody told me we were having a party," Meredith said as she scooped up a piece of melty cheese and mushroom pizza from the open box on the coffee table. It dripped warm, orange-colored grease onto her hands. She reached for a paper towel from the roll that sat on the coffee table and dabbed at the developing stains. 

"We wanted to do this yesterday," Izzie said. "But I had to call everyone and cancel on account of the noisy sex. Dr. Shepherd, have some pizza."

Meredith watched as Derek came back into the room. He shook his head, looking at the pizza as though it were a noxious, fuming pile of slag. He moved toward Meredith and then pushed past. 

"Do you ever eat anything that's not healthy?" Meredith asked with a laugh as he retrieved a chair from the dining room, sat down, and pulled her down onto his lap where she collapsed with a giggle. 

He shook his head, but gave in when she pouted. "Fine, give me a mushroom," he said. 

"Just a mushroom?" The pizza flopped in her grasp as she picked at it, but she held onto it. A spot of grease ended up on Derek's cheek. He stared at her, bemused. She kissed it off, only to notice more had dripped onto her jeans.

"Okay," she said with a laugh. "Pizza is good on you. Not so good on me, though." She gave up trying to fish out a mushroom from the coagulating mess, put her makeshift napkin on the floor, and dropped the slice onto it. For one vague moment, she knew she should be concerned about how awful the hard wood floor was being treated, but then she looked back at Derek and didn't quite care so much. She'd just move the carpet later. 

As he wrapped his hands around Meredith's midsection, Derek looked at Dr. Burke. "Preston," he said.

Dr. Burke nodded back. "Derek."

"So, Meredith, how are you feeling?" George asked as he took another swig of beer. Callie massaged his shoulders, and he wobbled back and forth as she applied pressure. A lazy smile crept over his face. A slightly more lascivious one crept over Callie's.

Meredith smiled. "Really great, actually," she said.

"Bet you're liking the time off," Alex added. He took a sip of beer.

She nodded, and then everyone seemed to break off into his or her own conversations at once. 

"Do you want a muffin, Dr. Shepherd?" Izzie asked, jumping suddenly to her feet. "I made some low-fat ones when I got home this evening. They're out in the kitchen. Still warm, probably."

"Oh, no thanks," Derek said, clearing his throat. "I've had dinner already." Which was a lie, but he squeezed her stomach in a gesture that just screamed, run with me, so Meredith didn't protest, and Izzie sat back down, a disappointed look on her face. 

She and Derek had spent all day doing stupid stuff that usually only tourists did. Stupid stuff that she hadn't done since she was a kid, being dragged on fieldtrip after fieldtrip with silly worksheets and dittoes to fill out and pass the time. But this time, the trip had been fun. Fun, exciting, and fresh. She was all for the fieldtrip thing now.

They'd gone through the Seattle Aquarium. That had been an impulse. She didn't know what had possessed her to suggest it. But Derek had shrugged and smiled, said he'd never actually been there yet, and they'd walked through it. He'd probably just liked watching her as she was reduced to a cute-speaking puddle whenever a seal would swim past the observation window. It was a weakness, she knew.

By the end of the day, they'd actually ended up on top of the Space Needle as planned. They'd watched the ferries passing through Puget Sound. It'd been clear enough that Mount Rainier had not been clouded from view in a halo of fog and rain, and, for the first time ever, she'd found the sight of it amazing. And kissing on top of the Space Needle was definitely something she could stand to do again. When they'd finally left the observation tower, Seattle had grown dark, and lights had blossomed in the swath of darkness below like thousands of little fireflies. It'd been breathtaking. Miles of breathtaking. 

It'd been late enough that they had decided to head home after that, but they'd never gotten around to grabbing dinner. Oh, sure, he'd bought her snacks. A hotdog from a vendor. A slushee or two. He'd had a coffee somewhere along the way, but that was about it.

She turned to gaze at Derek, to really look at him. Now that the blush had faded, a pale cast held his face in a wan vice. He'd looked like that throughout the day, but she'd just passed his pallor off as a product of walking everywhere in the cold. But the paleness still hung there on his skin, even now in the warmth, and gave him a breathless, wispy look, a subtle sickly appearance. 

He noticed her watching him and turned. His face crinkled into a gorgeous smile. "What?" he said, low and quiet. Conversation continued around them, unaware. 

"Nothing," she whispered back. But there, deeply hidden, she thought she could see the trace of something off in his gaze as it met her own. Something desperate, something clawing to be noticed. Something primal.

Maybe he really was sick. She thought he'd been lying for her benefit in the morning, trying to insist he wasn't taking the day off just because of her. But maybe he really was ill. She frowned. 

"There's some fresh fruit in the fridge if you want that instead, Dr. Shepherd," Izzie added.

"Really, I'm fine," Derek answered, the vestige of politeness he'd managed to grasp for the last inquiry evaporating into genuine annoyance. Conversation curled around the room in such a jumble that nobody else seemed to notice how much Izzie pestered Derek except Meredith. Meredith looked back and forth between the two of them. What was up with that?

Derek ran a hand through his hair, looking flustered.

Cristina hopped up from Dr. Burke's lap and looked at Meredith pointedly. "Meredith, can I talk to you for a second? In private?"

"Okay," Meredith said and reluctantly stood. Derek smiled at her, though it was a distracted gaze, and then turned to talk to Dr. Burke about something.

"What's this about?" she asked as Cristina yanked her into the kitchen without word.

"She thinks McDreamy needs some McSaving," Cristina said as she went to the refrigerator, pulled out another Heineken, popped off the cap, and began to chug it. 

"Why?" Meredith asked.

Cristina shrugged, pulling the bottle from her lips. "He didn't eat her waffles this morning, and now she's got it into her head that he's not eating at all, which is silly. You guys just came back from dinner, right?" 

"Well--" she began. Waffles? Derek wasn't a waffle person. 

Cristina barreled onward. "So it's obviously Izzie being McPsycho. She does that every once in a while." 

"Sure," Meredith replied weakly, trying to think specifically about Derek and the last week and a half. The night after she'd woken up from the accident, he'd been pretty upset. Upset in a sobbing, losing my world, somebody shot my dog sense, which disturbed her to no end. Up until then, she'd never really seen Derek be anything but annoyingly perky and upbeat, vaguely distant and full of glowers, or passionately angry. When he got upset, he lashed out. Acted like a jerk, sometimes justified, sometimes not. But never had she seen this weird grieving. And she'd known it was her fault. Known that he was messed up like that because she'd almost died. So, she'd done what she could to comfort him. He'd calmed down, gone to sleep, and that had been the last of it.

She'd thought.

"So do you have any tequila hidden away somewhere?" Cristina said, looking at Meredith with eyes wide and hopeful. "I couldn't find your stash."

Meredith blinked and shook her head. Focus, girl. Focus. Issues with Derek could wait until everyone was gone and they had a bit more privacy. "I ran out before the ferry stuff," she said. "Never had a chance to buy more."

Cristina's face fell. "Damn."

Meredith gestured to the half-empty Heineken. "Beer isn't enough?"

"Burke wants me to pick a wedding date." Cristina pulled out a chair from the counter and collapsed into it, slumping down with a sigh as she went.

Meredith pulled out the chair next to Cristina's. "Didn't you two just get engaged?"

"We were fine. And then, all of the sudden, yesterday night he asks as I'm getting into bed if I have any idea when I want to get married yet. I just barely said yes to begin with. I can't pick a date!" 

Cristina rolled the bottle in her fingers so that it slowly spun with a scrape, scrape, scrape noise across the wooden countertop. She stared at it, her curly black hair falling down over her shoulders like a drape. The overhead light glinted off the surface of the bottle, throwing flecks of caramel-colored glare back at them. Cristina sighed. And sighed again. The boisterous sounds of laughter filtered in from the other room, kicked back and forth between the two of them, making the void of cheer in the kitchen increasingly apparent.

Meredith narrowed her eyes. Obviously, she wasn't a specialist in the area, but wasn't getting married supposed to make you, well, excited? "Cristina, are you really sure you want-"

Cristina cut her off. "Have you and McDreamy talked about it at all?"

"Marriage?"

"Yeah."

"It came up in passing." 

Cristina snorted and took a swig of her beer. "How does something like marriage come up in passing?"

"Well, it was while we were at the ferry site. We were sort of taping up this girl with a gushing wound. Not exactly prime time for a real discussion."

"Wow," Cristina said, a splutter of beer cutting her off with a choke. She put the bottle down on the counter with a clank. The beer sloshed and settled. "He asked you to marry him in the middle of traumapalooza?"

Meredith's cheeks flushed with heat. "No. He was just trying to figure out what was bugging me and asked me if I was mad that he hadn't asked."

Cristina shoved the bottle away and folded her hands. "Are you?"

"Am I what?"

"Mad that he hasn't asked."

"Well, no." She paused to think, smiling as she remembered Derek, offbeat, concerned, asking her how she felt about marriage, just because he thought it was something she wanted. She was pretty sure it wasn't something he wanted. Not now. Not after the mess he'd just gotten himself out of. She couldn't blame him. "No," she continued. "He just got divorced. And we have a whole lot other stuff to shovel through." 

"Like?" Cristina prodded.

"Like, relationshipy stuff! Whatever! Can we talk about something else, please?"

"Ooh, did I hit a nerve?"

"Cristina," Meredith said with a sigh. 

Cristina hadn't hit a nerve, not really. But after the accident, after waking up to Cristina, exuberant that she finally got to tell her person about the most important thing in her life, after waking up in Derek's arms the morning after, she'd been happy. And Derek had at least seemed happy. She found herself reluctant to broach the more serious subjects, found herself wanting to revel in the fantasy a little longer. Denial was a wonderful vacation spot. And if the storm clouds looming over her sudden observations of Derek's behavior were any indication, it was a place she wasn't going to be able to stay much longer.

"Okay, I'll stop," Cristina said, peeling Meredith away from her musing. "So, how was it?"

Meredith raised an eyebrow. "It?"

"The marathon reunion sex that I keep hearing about. Izzie complained all day today."

"Oh. It was..." Meredith blushed and kept blushing. That had been pretty crazy. Right there at the door of the house. Like a couple of lusty teenagers. Derek had been shaky and practically crawling the walls of the car all the way home. Seeing a golden opportunity, she'd started to tease, started to watch him tense and pant, trying to maintain his composure. It'd been amusing. And then he'd...

"Details!" Cristina interjected.

"Urgent!" Meredith said. "He kind of attacked me the minute we got in the door." And then again in the shower. And on the bed. And beside the bed. And in the tub. Everywhere. 

"But was it good?"

"Earth shattering is the term I would use. God, he does this bendy thing in the shower that's--"

"Okay," Cristina stopped her. "As long as it was good. Do you want a beer? I need another one. I really do." 

Meredith stared at Cristina's empty bottle. When had that happened? Probably between the various iterations of sexy instant replay that'd sucked her brain along for the lusty, thrusty ride. "Sure," she said.

Cristina went to the refrigerator and pulled out two more beer bottles. They clinked as she gripped their necks and yanked them back. She tossed one in a high arc to Meredith, who caught it one-handed without thinking. Meredith reached for the bottle opener after Cristina had finished with it. She pried open the top. Air released with a bubbly hiss, and a vague malty scent tickled her nose. She took a sip and swirled it on her tongue. 

The two of them wandered back out into the living room, fresh beers in hand, into the crush of laughter and words, words that tumbled around her like she was in a Boggle bowl, almost dizzying, cloying. Warmth and joviality wafted so thick she found it almost hard to breathe, and yet at the same time, she found it exhilarating. It was good to be there. Good to be laughing, talking, breathing.

Derek was gone, Meredith noted. The dining room chair where he'd sat was empty, conspicuously so in the crowded room, like the redheaded stepchild of chairs. She went and sat down. No hint of warmth lingered. He'd been gone a while.

She frowned. "Where'd Derek go?" she asked.

"Went to bed," Alex said. "Said he had an early surgery tomorrow."

Which was another lie. Meredith knew it. Derek had gone on for several minutes as they'd walked up to the house about how nothing was happening tomorrow. Nothing important. That he could 'be sick' again. And that worried her, more than she liked to admit. Derek wasn't a hugely social person, but he'd always made a point of being nice to her friends. And Dr. Burke, at least, was somebody Derek considered an actual friend, rather than one inherited through her. For Derek to snub his nose at a gathering like this was unusual. And, suddenly, she wished she'd stayed out here instead of going off for her private tête-à-tête with Cristina. Because the curiosity was a burning, living, breathing thing, that grew worse with each passing second, generating more and more awful scenarios for her, scenarios that would have been nixed if she'd just stayed and watched him.

What was wrong with Derek? She almost hoped it was nothing more than the flu, or some passing cold virus. At least those were things that were easily fixed, if not easily endured.

She managed to live through the remaining hour of the party, until everyone was shaking hands or hugging and tromping out the door into the night. Finally, as everyone filtered out, and Izzie started to pick up the trash, she sighed in relief. "Thanks for the party, Izzie," she said.

"Sure!" Izzie said in an over-cheerful tone. Izzie made a reach for one of the bottles, missed, laughed, and reached again. Meredith tried to help her pick things up, but Izzie shooed her away. "This party was for you. You don't get to pick up."

And so Meredith walked upstairs, determined, to the bedroom, only to find Derek lying in the dark on his back, a pillow thrown over his head, swathed in a ripple of tangled sheets that came to a stop at his waist. His chest rose and fell, soft and even. 

She slipped out of her clothes and pulled on a shirt and flannel shorts. She sat beside him, rubbed her hand along his arm. "You'd tell me if something was wrong, right?" she whispered.

He didn't stir.

And so she settled in to sleep, curling up next to him, absorbing the warmth that fell from his skin in waves. She sighed, letting the blur of his shoulder be her focal point as she let the world fall away. Clarity snapped back as Izzie thudded past once to enter the bathroom across the hall and once to leave it. She blinked and settled back into the blur. She'd just begun to drift away again when Derek began to mutter.

It started quietly at first, enough that she thought she'd imagined it. And then the words became more forceful. More desperate. "No, no, no," he said as he began to twitch and sweat. He pulled the pillow from his face, slammed it to the floor, but his eyes remained closed.

"Derek," she hissed, shoving at his arm. 

He sucked in a breath, rolled on his side, thrashed, but didn't wake. "No. Please, no," he said.

"Derek!" she said, more firmly this time. She clenched her nails into his bicep, not wanting to jar him, but not wanting him to languish in such a bad state, either.

His eyes snapped open, and for a minute he didn't see, still in the throes of the nightmare. His eyes stayed glassy and horror-filled for several painful heartbeats. Then he blinked. His gaze shifted to her. His torso hitched once. Twice. "Mere," he whispered, his voice dark and thick with emotion. He curled onto his side, pulling her arm with him like a security blanket. She embraced him, let herself lie along the length of his back.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"No," he said.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

There was a rustle as he shook his head.

"Okay," she said.

She held him, running her free hand through his hair. He just lay there, back to her, quiet, saying nothing. One of the last coherent thoughts she had before exhaustion finally took her was that he was still awake, still hurting. And it scared her. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Author's Notes: Somewhat of a short part today while I set some bigger things up. Thanks to everyone reading and reviewing. I love the comments!**

When she woke up, light filtered through the window blinds. Birds chirped from one of the trees outside the window, merrily pronouncing that she had slept far later than she had intended. Come to think of it, she couldn't recall the last time she had woken up past the sunrise unless she was working on the night shift, and as a result had gone to bed after it as well.

She rolled to her side and put a hand out. Empty space. The sheets were cold and rumpled, and Derek was gone, though the scent of him still lay faintly on the pillow. 

She slid the covers back and stood, marveling at how rested and refreshed she felt, and also at how quiet the house was. The sounds of morning, the birds, people outside walking, cars passing, all emanated from outside the walls. The inside of the house itself was devoid of activity. It was downright odd. She half expected Izzie to go thumping past the door, or George, despite having moved out, to be fighting for bathroom rights. Something. Anything.

"Derek?" she called, expecting to find him lounging in the kitchen or perhaps sacked out on the couch, watching television. But, as she padded through the house, checking each room as she called his name again and again, she didn't find him anywhere. 

For a brief moment, a very brief moment, she panicked. He had left. He had gotten upset and left her. But after several halting breaths, she put the pieces of herself together again and reason came flooding back. Of course, that was silly. He'd probably just decided to go into work after all. It was unreasonable for her to assume he could put aside his work for two days entirely on a whim, as much as he may insist he could or wanted to do it. He was a department head, after all, and trying to get the job of Chief of Surgery.

She ambled over to the phone in the kitchen and dialed his private cell, but it went to voicemail after the first ring, which either meant he was in a surgery and couldn't be disturbed, or he just wasn't interested in talking and had turned his phone off. She hoped it was the former. 

She thought about calling Izzie to go track him down for her, but thought better of it as the idea really sunk in. Izzie would make a mountain out of a little bit of worry and concern herself needlessly, possibly bugging Derek in the process, which was something Meredith wanted to avoid.

So, she called Cristina, who picked up on the second ring.

"What's up?" Cristina asked.

"Derek did the disappearing thing on me this morning," Meredith said, trying not to sound overly concerned and pretty sure she'd failed at it. "I'm just calling to find out if he's at the hospital."

There was a pause. "I'm actually in the gallery watching him do a hemispherectomy with Dr. Weller as we speak."

"Oh, okay. Why do you sound funny?"

"Is that you that just called him?"

Meredith frowned. "Yeah, why?"

"Well, he almost dropped the scalpel. What did you do to him?"

"Nothing!" Meredith stood and began to pace, wrapping the phone cord in curls around her index finger. "He was upset last night. And I have no clue what happened between then and now. He usually at least says goodbye when he goes in on a different shift..."

"Ooh," Cristina said. "Is he in the McDog house?"

"No, I just..." She paced. And paced. Ran laps around the center island. It was a wonder the phone cord didn't knock anything off onto the floor. "I'm worried, Cristina. And I don't really know what to do about it without degenerating in to a mother hen. I don't want to be Meredith the nag. That's not me."

Cristina clicked her tongue. "Think of a creative way to make him tell you what's up while, at the same time, making him think it was his idea to spill."

Meredith stopped. "How do I do that?"

"I don't know." A rumble filtered through the line as something on Cristina's end jostled. "You expect me to know these things? I'm not a relationship counselor, Mere."

"Well, what do you do when Burke won't talk about something?" Meredith asked.

"Meredith, we spent an entire month not talking. Do you really want to ask my advice on this?"

"Well, okay, that might be a blind leading the blind thing, huh," Meredith replied. 

"Usually, Burke's a griper anyway. A griper, not a bottler. He gripes. Listen, I've got to go. I'm being paged to OR 5."

"Okay. Don't enjoy the blood and gore too much."

"Yeah, right."

A sudden click slammed through the line, and Meredith was met with a dial tone.

She hung up the phone and sat for several minutes, staring at it. So, Derek was doing a hemispherectomy. He hadn't mentioned that at all when they'd discussed his schedule yesterday. She hoped he wasn't creating extra work for himself just to stay away, but that was, of course, silly. Right? It was silly, right? It was, no doubt, some unplanned emergency. Right.

Stop, Meredith. Stop right there, she told herself. This? What she was doing right then? It was well on the way to nagsville. And she didn't want to be the stereotypical, apron-wielding, clingy disaster case that had to know every detail of every minute thing that happened to her boyfriend. She loved Derek. And she respected his privacy. And that was that.

But wasn't that just it? Wasn't that what had gotten them to this awkward, bad place? They were both people who bottled things up. Bottlers, Cristina had called it. They were both bottlers. It tended to lead to not a lot of talking about anything of relevance. Usually, they could pretend everything was roses, but not always. And, when she'd woken up after the ferry accident, seen how much her temporary death had messed Derek up inside, she'd made a vow to herself to not to be that bottley person anymore. 

But Derek, that was another matter. Derek was definitely still bottling. And from what she could see, nothing good was coming from it. Almost dropping a scalpel in surgery? Not like him at all. Nightmares? Not eating? Definitely not like him. She couldn't help it. She worried. Her pacing resumed.

She had the sinking suspicion that this was all her fault. Maybe delayed stress reaction to her nearly dying. He had been pretty upset the night after, but he'd seemed fine after that, and so she'd let it go. But now, she wasn't so sure. 

A knock at the front door interrupted her spiraling thoughts. She glanced down at herself. Flannel shorts and a shirt. She decided she was decent enough despite having just gotten up, and went to answer it. It was probably just a package delivery or something. She pulled open the door.

And the world dropped out from under her.

Thatcher Grey stood there, looking rumpled, in minor disarray. He wore loose brown pants, a pair of scuffed up loafers, and a dingy-looking, cream-colored sweater spattered with tiny flecks of lint. His gray hair ruffled as the fingers of a light breeze ran through it. He stood there, looking flustered, like he would be fidgeting if it weren't for the glacial pace at which he processed the world. And in his hands, he held a simple, gray ceramic container.

"Meredith," he said as she stared slack-jawed at him through the screen door.

"Is that-" she asked, pointing vaguely at the urn, but she couldn't finish, just couldn't finish.

He looked down at the jar, his face flooding with red blush. He shifted from foot to foot, back and forth, as if he were debating whether to bolt. "I tried to stop by earlier, but your roommate said you were still in the hospital. I didn't think you'd want me to, well, to visit you there," he said.

Finally, the shock of seeing him there, at her doorstep of his own volition, well, mostly of his own volition, wore thin and frayed. She processed the fact that, yes, Thatcher Grey was there. Standing there. And, as she came to grips with it, she pushed open the door and stepped aside. "Come in," she said, gesturing vaguely behind her to the entryway. Her voice cut out unexpectedly, and the words ended in a little gaspy choke.

He walked through the doorway, hesitating over the threshold, looking at the edges of the doorframe as though he were expecting to get knocked back by some invisible barrier. He stopped when the tips of his toes touched the floor just past the welcome mat, distributed his weight on both feet, and when he was satisfied, only then did he look around at the house, his mouth hanging slightly open. His gaze paused every once in a while on some particular object, a lamp, a knickknack, a photograph. His expression changed as he passed over each little thing, staring, lost in something far away. A glint of a laugh twinkled in his eyes, only to be overtaken with a sweeping shadow of despair, and then a squinty look that said he couldn't quite remember something, but knew he should. She saw all that on his face, all that and a rainbow of emotions between. 

She wrung her hands together, watching, expecting some sort of judgment, but not sure what. After a long swell and crush of moments, he looked at her, his face ruddy. "It's still the same," he said, his tone cut apart with knives of hurt and weariness. A sad smile crept across his features.

"I don't have time to do much with it," she snapped. Defensive. Why defensive? She wasn't being attacked. And yet...

Thatcher nodded, his lips parting as he looked at her with a gaze that said he was trying to understand her sudden belligerence. Trying and failing. "Busy and all, yes?"

"Yeah."

"I..." His mouth opened. Sound jumbled up on the tip of his tongue, came out as a hesitant blurb that could have been a vowel, but he never finished, never allowed a complete word to form. He just stared for a moment and then pushed the urn at her awkwardly. "Here."

She clutched it. Thatcher's hands had left pockets of warmth across the surface. Just pockets in the icy cold.

"Thank you for..." Meredith began. She glanced down at the urn, and then back to Thatcher. "Well, for taking care of it. Everything."

He nodded, movements tight, bobbing, like a bird getting ready to take off. "You were at the hospital," he said, as if that explained everything.

"Yeah," she said, as if that answered all the questions he hadn't asked. A lump formed, thick and obtrusive, in the back of her throat. She tried to swallow around it as the silence in the space between them grew to an oppressive weight, crushing her. He stared, shuffling from foot to foot, eyes darting here and there, anywhere but her, as if he couldn't stand to look at her, or maybe just didn't want to be reminded of his past mistakes.

She cleared her throat with effort. "Do you want a drink or something? I think we have lemonade. Orange juice..."

He shook his head. "Oh, no, no thanks. I just wanted to give you. Well, that."

"Okay then," Meredith replied.

"All right."

"Take care, Meredith," he said. He stopped. At the doorway, he stopped. His hand rested on the handle, fleeting, barely touching. His body twitched, just a tremor, as if he wanted to turn around but had stopped himself. Another half-syllable fell from his lips, barely audible. Another twitch. And then he lost his battle and turned around. 

"You're okay, Meredith. Right? You're okay? I know it's not my business, but..."

"Yeah. I'm okay," Meredith replied as she felt the bite of tears, pricking and poking at the backs of her eyes. Stab, stab, stab.

Thatcher nodded, hesitant, as if he didn't really believe her, but then he nodded again, decisive, sure. He turned to the door again, this time turning the knob instead of leaving his hand to hover over it. A hollow click sounded as the latch disengaged. "Take care," he said again.

"You too," Meredith replied.

And then he was gone again, out the door. She watched him putter to his beat up old station wagon, climb in, start the car with a rumble, take a long, weary look at the house, and then drive off. She stood, staring at the space in the driveway where he had been for a long time, her hands clenched around the container that held her mother's ashes.

After a long eternity of moments, she shivered. The cold air seeped in through the screen door, chilling her legs, ruffling her loose clothing. She closed the door and stepped back. She gripped the urn as she fell back against the wall with a thud and slid to the floor. She stared at it, the urn. She stared a long time.

It wasn't decorative. Or particularly noteworthy, save for its contents. 

She had known her mother was dead, thought she'd faced it already, dealt with it, but that had been in a far away, safe place. Now the reality was in her hands, and it hit her again, full force, for perhaps the first time.

She sat, holding her mother's ashes for a long time, not knowing quite what to think, or to feel. Relief. Sadness. Nothing. Maybe something else. She wobbled between them like a child learning to ride a bike, back and forth, back and forth, falling every other step. Relief. Sadness. Nothing. Something else.

After another long eternity of moments, she got up, placed the urn on the dining room table, and left it there while she took a shower. A long, warm shower.

She threw on a ratty sweat suit.

She grabbed her keys and left without looking back. 

She wanted to take a walk. Then she would decide how she felt.


	7. Chapter 7

He sat in his small closet, an eight by ten foot office, working on the mountain of paperwork he'd been long neglecting. His old oak desk sat perpendicular to the wall that was adjacent to the door. A stained desktop computer several upgrade cycles behind the flow of the world at large sat at the corner of his desk, silent, its main purpose to serve as an extra shelf for things he hadn't yet integrated into the greater disarray. Sometimes, he did use it as a word processor. Sometimes. Two empty, beat up chairs faced him from the other side of the desk, put there as an afterthought for consults, and the rest of the small room was a cascading, tumbling wall of papers, books, leaflets, notepads, memos... Medical journals sat stacked in the corners of the room in no particular order with crumpled, faded sticky notes pointing out articles in the vast mess that he thought were interesting or relevant to his work. His shelves had long been filled to the brim with old research and other things, some of which he'd long forgotten the purpose for. The musty smell of old air circulated with the quiet thumping of the ducts. And the carpet, probably once a vibrant shade of tangerine, lay bleached of color and threadbare on the floor. For all the perks his job offered, his office wasn't one of them, but he felt at home there all the same.

This little cluster of space was his haven of disorganization. The one place in his life that he let be a mess for the sake of being a mess, and a torrential one at that, which was why, in general, he commandeered empty conference rooms for private discussions with future patients. If they saw this… hole, he doubted anyone would ever consider him a capable surgeon, not enough to operate on parts of them like brains and spines and nerve clusters. But he needed this. Needed this space where nothing was ever in control, and he could be lost in it without feeling some strange need for careful composure. It was his chaos place.

The paper he was working on blurred in front of him, and he set his pen down, watched it roll lazily to a stop as it hit the spine of his notepad. He'd been jotting notes for several hours now. Pages and pages of words, hasty diagrams, and other scribbles sprawled across the yellow-lined paper in a latticework, a spider web of theories, observations, practices. This was something he'd let languish for a while in favor of the more active aspects of his job, surgery after surgery. It felt good to get it out of his system, where it had begun to twist around in circles and get confused with other things, other papers he had yet to write.

He leaned back and sighed, working his hands over his shoulders, vaguely surprised at the shooting protests lodged by every sinew as they stretched. The surgery he'd performed in the morning at Dr. Weller's behest had been long and grueling, and he'd been in a world of aches and pains when the ten-hour session had concluded, but usually, by now, those aches would have gone away. Then again, the adrenaline he usually experienced, the wonder as he stood over an open body cavity, knowing that he was one of the few people in the country who was equipped with the knowledge and the skill to do this, to save this life, had been absent, leaving him for the duration of the procedure with an unsettled feeling, like for some reason he didn't fit in his own skin. Didn't belong there.

He'd needed an uncharacteristic break midway through to inhale an espresso and then another break at about the three-quarters point to fight the expanding blur of dulled senses and detachment. He'd never had that happen before. Surgery had always been exhilarating for him. Not quite like good sex, but similar. Today, there'd been no spark. And people had noticed. On top of that, Meredith's phone call had startled him, stabbed him with a bit of sharp, serrated guilt as the sound of her special ring tone had pealed through the operating room. He knew she didn't like waking up alone without an explanation. Dr. Weller, the neurosurgery resident he'd been teaching the procedure to, had asked not once, but twice, if he was all right. He'd laughed it off, blinked it away, but…

He looked up at the soft tap on the open door. "I thought I might find you here," Mark said as he shuffled into the room and took one of the rickety consult seats. He was dressed in his street clothes, a frayed pair of jeans and an old, faded red t-shirt that'd been his favorite for years and years.

"Mark," Derek said, neutral, trying desperately not to inflect the pain that seeing Mark always brought to him. To not let Mark know just how badly scarred Derek had become. To not let Mark know that Derek considered him the living, breathing representative of the fucked up tangle he'd allowed his life to become. It was always a battle, to not let Mark know. A battle that he often failed.

"Want to grab a beer?" Mark asked. "My shift just ended, and you've been here even longer than me."

"No, I don't want to get a beer," Derek snapped. He surreptitiously glanced at his watch for the first time in hours and tried not to betray his surprise at the truth in Mark's words. It was well past 8 PM. He'd been there sixteen hours. Sixteen hours, and it was all an achy, dull blur. The ability to sleep seeming to have abandoned him, after Meredith had finally dozed off, he'd gotten up that morning, showered, and come in to work. Voluntarily. In the pitch black of pre-dawn. He'd needed to… get away. To breathe. To think. To… Something. He hadn't left yet.

"Oh, come on," Mark protested.

Derek glared. "When did I ever give you the impression that grabbing a beer with you was **anywhere** on my list of priorities?"

Mark switched tactics, the subtle planes of his face shifting from friendly to serious to worried. "How is Meredith?" he asked. 

"She's fine," Derek said. He picked up his pen. Made a point of shuffling his papers. "Look, I'm kind of busy here."

Mark ignored his hints. "If she's so fine, then why are you still at work doing voluntary overtime? The ER is as quiet as it ever gets. The OR board is practically blank. And you're still here."

"What business is it of yours?" Derek asked, putting the pen back down. He crossed his arms in front of his chest.

Mark sighed. "Derek, I'm trying here."

"Don't try. Go away."

"No."

"Mark…"

"Look, Derek. I've tried the subtle route already, and it hasn't worked. Come grab a beer with me. You can glower at me and hate me while you drink it, hell, you can even put it on my tab, but I know you well enough to know that you need to talk to someone."

"No."

"Something's got you messed up, man, and it isn't me. Almost dropping a scalpel? Come on… You need a drink. I'm buying. End of story."

Mark stood up, walked around the desk, and yanked Derek's chair back. Then his hands were on Derek's shoulders, pulling him, forcing him away from the desk. Derek's lab coat cut into him in the underarms at the seams as Mark dragged him, mercilessly plowing forward. Derek stumbled, felt his legs tripping around like appendages of a broken marionette as they tried to get purchase for his feet.

"Get off!" Derek said, his voice a low hiss of sudden, overwhelming rage, but he was so surprised at the invasion of his personal space that he was out in the hallway before he dug his feet down in protest. His sneakers shrieked across the floor tiles for a yard or so before Mark came to a halt with a grunt and turned to face him. Mark didn't let go of the handful of lab coat he had clenched in his palm.

Derek reached up and clawed at Mark's fingers, forcing his former friend to release him or risk injury. "Stop trying to fix this, Mark," he growled as he backed away and shook himself off, straightening his skewed lab coat as an afterthought. "You can't fix this. You can't ever fix this."

Mark, unperturbed, said, "I'm not trying to fix anything but you, Derek. You need help, man. And I'm one of the few people who knows you well enough to see that you're drowning."

The words could not have been a harder sucker punch. Derek blinked and froze, froze standing there in the hallway, his face a red blush of rage, rage at Mark, rage at life, rage at everything. He sucked in a breath, sucked in a gasping breath, but it did little to restore his equilibrium. His arm tensed up, bicep straining, wanting to explode, and then he pulled back and released, ramming his closed fist toward Mark's waiting face.

But Mark dodged, easily he dodged, ducking under Derek's swing without word or smirk. He wrapped around Derek's upper torso, and suddenly Derek found himself in a chokehold, gasping. "And I know how you fight, Derek," Mark said. "You bottle shit up and let it whittle away at you, until someone or something pokes you too hard and you blow up. I'm just glad it's at me and not Meredith." 

"You don't get to talk about Meredith."

"I wasn't planning on it," Mark said. "But you need to."

And that brought him pause. Pause. A moment of hesitation. A wobble. A hint of toppling before the cliff. "Meredith is fine. She's fine," he said, even as the Technicolor memories bled back into existence.

"Right," Mark replied, though his tone belied the word.

Derek was beyond hearing.

Meredith in the water. Meredith under his hands, dead. Meredith, her lips touching his in the lifeless, hollow kiss of mouth-to-mouth. And suddenly he couldn't think. Couldn't breathe as the fear seized him. He stood, stood in the hallway, panting, frozen, like a deer caught in the haunting glow of an oncoming car at midnight.

"She is. She is. She—" Derek broke off with a pant, his eyes burning, his sight blurred he was so close to losing it entirely.

Snap back. Snap forward. Snap back. He saw Meredith again, floating, hair strewn out from her face in wispy, ethereal streaks, like an angel, floating. He felt the touch of her dead fingers as he swam for her, reached for her. Felt the vomit at the back of his throat when he remembered the hours and hours of waiting, waiting to know whether she would wake up. Felt the inner coil of dread, like snakes writhing in his stomach, when he thought about the second, that one precious second that it had taken Meredith to decide not to fight, that one precious second that told him he couldn't always be there for her, that he couldn't always know that she would be living, breathing, smiling the next time he saw her. Everyone had seconds like that, seconds that defined his or her life, shaped it, or ended it. And she had chosen end, and it scared him witless, even though he thought he understood it, because as much as he did get it, he couldn't ever fix it. She had chosen end, for just one second, and there had been nothing he could do about it. Not. One. Thing. It terrified him, drenched him in the sort of fear that was a churning, sick, awful thing that burgeoned, kept burgeoning, out of control. He couldn't stop it.

"So, do you want to get that drink now?"

Derek watched Mark, watched his former best friend, former brother, felt the roiling, ugly emotions as they bled out of him as if from a wound and left nothing but numb denial behind. He inhaled. Inhaled again. He wanted… He didn't know.

Mark turned, and Derek found himself following. His feet, of their own volition, followed Mark down the hall, into the elevator, out into the drizzle and the night, all while he stood behind his eyes, watching. Watching, but not stopping.

He remembered back when they had been in college. Pre-med school. Mark had been in a motorcycle accident. He'd flipped completely off his bike, tumbled and skidded on the pavement, all while Derek had watched, thinking his heart was stopping. Mark had miraculously stood up, brushed bits of glass and pieces of road debris off his leather jacket, his leather pants, and said, "Wow," as Derek had run up to him. Then he'd stumbled. Fallen. "Probably should have followed the speed limit," Mark had said, had mumbled, "But damn, that was fun," as he'd drifted off into shock and Derek had called the ambulance.

It had always been like that. Derek, always picking up after Mark, the irresponsible lout. Derek, always buying the drinks. Derek, always cursing when he came back to find the sock tied to the dorm room door handle, letting him know that Mark was having his way with another gullible woman.

For the first time ever, Mark led Derek. And Derek watched, numbed, not speaking, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. The world had gone topsy-turvy on him. It was spinning, and he couldn't stop it. He was sitting at a table at Joe's, a foaming pint of Guinness sitting in front of him, untouched, waiting, before he caught up with the world again and time snapped back into focus.

"So what's going on, Derek?" Mark asked.

Derek stared at his drink. Stared. He took a sip. It tasted awful, bitter. His tongue curled. He wondered why he liked Guinness. And then he took another sip. The alcohol plowed through him like a sack of bricks hanging from a pendulum. It was probably bad that he hadn't eaten more than a cracker or three in practically two days. More than two days. Probably bad, yes. Bad. He upturned the tall glass and took a few more chugs, until the world was spinning again, and it had nothing to do with confusion, and everything to do with the warm, fuzzy feeling of bliss that the beginnings of inebriation brought him. That was why he liked Guinness.

But the bliss lasted only for a second before it dragged him, tumbling down, down, down, into the pile of messy feelings, hiding, lurking at the back of his mind, waiting for him to slip up and let them out. Let them out and… The words began to tumble, tumble, tumble, his own free will, blitzed and gone, doing nothing to stop them. He pictured his inhibitions, sitting there somewhere in his head, piled on a lawn chair, sipping a daiquiri, laughing as he made a fool of himself, babbled endlessly to the man who was supposed to be his enemy. The man he hated.

"I can't look at her. Can't look at her without thinking about her dead," he said, and was ashamed at how the words just dribbled out of him. "I can't lose somebody else, Mark. I can't. I don't have anything but her left to lose at this point. You took everything I had, Mark. You took Addison, you took my best friend, you took my life in New York, and you took my marriage, all in one night you took them. And so I moved here, found her, tried to get some semblance of a life back, a life I would enjoy living. But I never came back from that, Mark. I don't have anything except Meredith, and now I can't look at her without feeling sick inside, but I know that if I blink, she might be gone."

He took another deep swig of Guinness, sucked it down, until the pint was gone, and the room started to fuzz up and haze. Halos rimmed the lights. The noises in the bar grew louder. Everyone's laughter pounded on his eardrums in a deep, pulsing throb. And a flush began to spread across his skin. He raised his hand, sort of, and signaled for another pint.

"Newsflash, Derek," Mark growled. "Everything in life that's worth having is something you can lose. Deal with it fast. Because worrying about losing Meredith is totally not worth actually losing her."

"Dn't you think I know that?" Derek said, his voice sounding strangely slurred and lispy to his ears, either because he genuinely couldn't talk, or because his ears weren't on straight. Joe appeared with a fresh, foaming pint of Guinness, and Derek started on it in moments.

"'M a doctor," he continued, clarity degenerating as he took a long draught. "I know what this is. S'traumatic stress."

Mark frowned at him.

"Want to play a round of darts, Derek? Could be therapeutic, beating the crap out of the dartboard with tiny pins."

Derek shook his head, let the world tumble back and forth, back and forth. "You g'ahead," he said. "You always hve t'get your game in."

Mark smirked. "So you do remember some things. We used to be friends, Derek."

"Used to be," Derek said.

Mark wandered off, and Derek took the time to drink some more, and more, until the room blurred so badly it felt like somebody had smeared Vaseline over his eyes, until he didn't dare stand up, because he knew he'd fall over, and he also knew he wouldn't care. For once, the alcohol tearing up his system was welcome. If he drank some more, then he wouldn't care at all about anything. And the temptation of oblivion was a sweet, sweet siren.

He finished off his second drink and raised his hand, signaling Joe for another. The bartender nodded, and a new pint of foaming, bitter Guinness sat in front of him in less than two minutes. He tipped the glass back and inhaled, inhaled, inhaled. The world melted.

"Well that sucked. I think the board was rigged," Mark said, back from his game of darts, sudden, as if he had popped in from thin air.

Derek blinked at him.

"Ordered another round without me? I'm hurt," Mark said with a mock frown. He tilted back his own beer, some imported crap from Austria that Derek had always hated. After taking a long swallow, Mark set his glass down, still his first one, and stared at Derek for a moment. Joviality bled from away from his stare, leaving only a serious, contemplating gaze behind. "So, when did this start?" Mark asked.

"Drinkin'?" Derek asked, momentarily confused. Things had started to move slowly, so slowly, glacially. Colors seemed bright, too bright, painful, sharp, and whenever he moved his head, everything in front of his face hazed in and out. 

"No, Derek," Mark said with a smirk. "The stress."

"Dunno." Derek shrugged, his whole body a wave of uncoordinated motion. He felt loose, muted, like every coherent thought was getting rammed through a trash compactor, arriving mangled for him to pick and choose from. He took another swig. "I thought I ws fine. An' then I brought her home."

"And?"

"Had lots of noisy, shouty, great sex. An' by the morning I was in fuckin' pieces. Pieces!" He shot his hand up for emphasis, sort of waved it there mid-air. It dangled listlessly, and then flopped back to the table with a smack. He stared at it, wondering what had made it jump like that. The room spun, and he stopped caring so much about the what and why. Round, and round, on a merry-go-round.

Mark raised an eyebrow. "Derek, you've never been this much of a lightweight. You're not even done with that third pint and you're plastered. Are you okay?"

Derek bobbed his head, marveling that such a little motion could seem so momentous, and slugged the rest of his drink down. He set the glass on the table next to the other two, where it twirled about on its axis and came to rest. He stared, fascinated. "You shdnt drink when you havn't eat'n," Derek slurred. "S'bad to do that. Goes strght t'the head."

"Oh man," Mark said. "When did you last eat?"

"Coupla days," Derek answered, manic, happy, and careening down, down, down. The world fuzzed in and out. And he thought he saw Mark standing in front of him, in a way that totally broke the concept of personal space and fed it to the dogs. The table rushed him, and the last thing he remembered thinking before everything blinked out was that peanuts stank, the tablecloth was awfully sticky, and he didn't care one lick about it.


	8. Chapter 8

**Author's Notes: For those who are interested, I'm predicting this story will be around 20 parts, maybe more, based on the loose outline I currently have. So we still have a ways to go yet :) Also, since there seems to be some concern, let me just assure everyone that I fix what I break!**

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When Derek collapsed in a slur of words and floppy limbs, shock condemned Mark's mind to a very slow pace. Derek, his drinking buddy since they'd both turned the legal drinking age, bowled flat by three beers? was his first thought. He could only remember one time Derek had actually drunk himself under the table, and it had been with a whole lot more than just three pints. He almost laughed. At least it had been Guinness, the imported extra stout kind. Slightly higher alcohol content than average beers. Somewhat less shameful. And then the doctor in him kicked in and the situation really, truly registered in his brain. Derek had drunk himself under the table with three pints of Guinness. Three pints that would have normally left him slurred, mal-coordinated, and a bit on the happy side. Not passed out.

"Derek," he said. He got up from the table and walked around to his friend. Former friend. Co-worker. Antagonistic fellow doctor. He didn't really know what to call Derek anymore. He put his hands on Derek's shoulder and shook. Shook hard.

"Derek!" he said, louder.

Other patrons in the bar looked up, looked over, stared, but they didn't do much. This probably wasn't unusual for a bar, what with so many idiots not knowing their limits.

For several moments, Derek didn't stir, and Mark began to wonder if he should call 911. Alcohol poisoning was serious. And Derek hadn't eaten in a long time. His blood sugar would be in a world of chaos. There could be seizures. He felt for a pulse and found one, slow and steady at Derek's jugular. His breathing seemed normal, only a little bit slow, which was a good sign.

"Derek," he said again, shaking Derek hard.

Finally, Derek snuffled, slurred something unintelligible, and was awake, blinking muzzily at him. Mark sagged in relief. It was still a potentially dangerous situation, since blood alcohol levels could increase even after drinking ceased, but as long as Derek was at least conscious, he was happy.

"Okay, Derek," Mark said. "I think it's time to go home."

Derek sort of nodded, sort of tried to stand, only to trip up and go flailing. Mark grabbed Derek under the shoulders and stood him up, then wrapped an arm over his neck and began to lead him out. As he walked past the bar, he looked over at Joe, and said, "Can you put all that stuff on my tab? I'll stop in and pay tomorrow."

Joe smiled. "Sure, Mark," he said. "Is he okay?"

Mark laughed. "Just wasted. I'll get him home."

With a bit of effort, he managed to drag Derek across the street, fighting gravity, other laws of physics, and Derek's utter lack of coordination. "Derek, you still awake?" he asked as a light drizzle started.

"Mmmm," Derek muttered.

The sky opened up and the drizzle became pouring rain. Fat, gluttonous raindrops spattered him in the face, plastered Derek's scrubs to his shivering frame, and soaked through Mark's jeans and shirt in moments. Derek slipped in his grasp and was inches from a complete surrender to the ground when Mark gripped him and hoisted him back up.

"See? This is why I hate Seattle," Mark said. "And you know, Derek, I don't think I ever appreciated what a graceful man you are, when you're not fucking blitzed that is."

"Where are you takin' me," Derek asked, as if he suddenly realized that he was no longer in the bar.

Mark rolled his eyes. "Home, Derek. You're lucky I'm not vengeful, or I'd be taking pictures with my cell phone."

Derek pushed against him.

"Jesus, man, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I used to be able to kid with you. Remember?"

Derek didn't seem impressed. "Gotta lotta nerve," he muttered.

Mark didn't really know what to say to that. He slogged forward, trying to remember exactly where he had parked his car in the Seattle Grace lot. It was dark, and the rain made it hard to see. He stopped, wheeling on one foot, trying to keep Derek upright, and fished his keys out of his pocket. Fumbling, he pushed the lock button. A cherry-colored Eclipse Spyder two rows down and to the left beeped, but with Derek hanging off his shoulder it may as well have been a mile or two. Wonderful.

"Could you help me out at least a little?" he said with a grunt as he dragged Derek through the waterlogged parking lot. A shock of cold lanced up his leg as his foot plunked into a deep, pothole-assisted puddle. Water plinked down, striking the cars, the pavement, and skipped back up on impact like fragmentation grenades, dozens of baby raindrops skittering out from each explosion. The thunderous roar of the pounding water deafened him. He weaved back and forth as Derek's weight shifted, stride after wobbly stride.

They made it to the car after what seemed like eons. Mark sighed and popped the locks. He wrestled Derek into the passenger seat, which was a little like trying to cram a tranquilized giraffe into a box, gangly limbs flying everywhere, and lots of groaning and shuffling. He'd never bemoaned having a tiny sports car before. Then again, he didn't often find himself carting drunks home. Derek had always stopped at tipsy. And Mark stayed far away from women who needed to get roaring drunk just to have a little fun between the sheets. There were plenty of women who needed much less encouragement.

He turned his head down and wandered back around to the driver's side of his Spyder, not even bothering with the futile gesture of shaking the rain off. It was everywhere, dripping down his face, his back, plastering his clothes to his skin. His shoes squished and squashed with every step. He might as well have been in the shower.

In moments, he was behind the wheel, mourning his leather bucket seats as they drowned in an agonizing, watery death. He hated Seattle. Had he mentioned that? At least with the weather there, he never put the top on his car down, thus leaving his seats relatively safe. Until now, anyway.

He started to turn the key in the ignition before he paused. "Crap. Derek, where do you live?"

Rain spattered down on the roof and the windows with in a hail of rapid thud, thud, thuds. It streamed down the windowpanes in glistening sheets.

Derek rolled his head toward Mark, sort of Exorcist-like, and looked at him blankly, his eyes glassy, unfocused. "What?" he asked.

"Your address. What is it?"

"Moved to Seattle," Derek answered.

"Yes, but where?"

"Moved to Seattle t'get away from you. Why are you here?"

Mark blew out a breath between his teeth. He was trying to be patient. He really was. But this Derek was just so foreign to him. Old Derek, the one that had been his friend, was a happy drinker. A talkative drinker. One that Mark knew how to tease and cajole without ruffling feathers. This new dark and dour Derek, this one that glowered at him, eyes screaming with wounded pride, tore deeply at him.

He knew that this was his fault. His fault. He'd fallen in love with Addison, somehow, and had been a stupid, oversexed letch about it. Sure, he had always been a womanizer, and he came by it honestly, but he had never thought he would be the man who slept with his best friend's wife. He never thought he'd be that ugly person. But he was. It had happened. There was no going back. And picking up the pieces was proving to be a Herculean feat.

But that was what Mark didn't understand. Addison and Derek seemed to be on good terms. They were civil. Even friendly. Addison had picked up the pieces despite adultery on both sides **and** a divorce. Why, after all this time, after Mark had apologized, even been more upfront about the situation than Addison had been, was Mark still relegated to the hated enemy list, still running around with a dust buster, trying to clean up the mess? He was the hated enemy, but Addison got friendly smiles, and it made absolutely no sense to him. He stared at Derek and saw his stormy gaze staring back.

"Never mind," Mark said with a growl. He reached across Derek's lap for his wallet and cell phone. Derek muttered a protest, weakly pushing him away, but Mark shrugged him off with an annoyed grunt. He fumbled with the latch on Derek's cell phone holder, retrieved the phone, and then pulled Derek's wallet from his pocket.

He flipped open the wallet, squinted at the driver's license tucked away behind the plastic flap, and whistled. "That's an actual address? That's like, in the middle of nowhere…"

But then, when he thought about it, he decided that it probably wasn't right. Derek had recently moved in with Meredith, right? At least, according to the Seattle Grace gossip hotline. Would Derek have updated his drivers' license yet? He wasn't sure.

"Not the trailer," Derek mumbled.

Okay then…

He flipped open Derek's cell phone, relieved to find that there was no keypad lock in place, no prompt for a pin number. In the dark of the car's cabin, the glow of the phone's backlight hurt his eyes. He squinted at the bright liquid crystal display, glancing at Derek out of the corner of his eye. The fluorescent shade looked ghastly on him. Mark scrolled through the contacts, the quiet beeps of the keypad barely audible over the thunderous pounding of the rain.

Addi cell, Addi work, Addi NYC, Addi hotel all flew past him. Bailey, Miranda. Sisters. Kathy. M… M… Where was M? He paused on Mark cell, Mark home, Mark work. They hadn't been updated and still reflected his New York numbers, but Derek still had them, hadn't deleted them. Mark looked up. Derek was staring out the window, his face blank, expressionless. Mark looked back at the phone. His name glowed back at him. Mark cell, Mark home, Mark work. Maybe there was a chance after all. Maybe. A small well of relief flooded him, just for a second before he quashed it, unwilling to give himself any more false hope than what he knew he already had.

He shrugged and continued plowing through the contacts, arriving at his goal in three more down strokes. Mere cell and Mere home were the options. He opted for the cell number first, only to be greeted with a cheerful voice recording after four rings. He tried the home number next.

"Hello?" a woman answered. Her voice was smooth and sexy, vaguely familiar, and definitely not Meredith.

"Um, hi," he began, surprised. "May I speak with Meredith please?" He hadn't known there'd be roommates, and female roommates at that. His gaze ticked to Derek. Since when did Derek do the roommate thing? He hadn't been able to get out of the college dorms fast enough.

"She's not home right now," the woman answered. "I don't know when she'll be back. Can I take a message?"

"Well," Mark said. "This is Dr. Sloan. I'm one of Meredith's co-workers."

"Oh, hello," the woman said. "This is Izzie Stevens."

"Right," Mark nodded, clarity blooming as he remembered the hot blond intern that he'd helped with the subdural bleed patient from the ferry accident. "Right, yeah."

"So, um," Dr. Stevens said. "Why are you calling?"

"Well, I kind of need your address, and directions to get there from Seattle Grace."

"What for?"

"Derek is a bit drunk at the moment. I didn't want him to drive. And he's not exactly being forthcoming with me."

"Oh. It's 613 Harper Lane." She babbled off some directions while he jotted the address down on the back of a gas receipt he found stuffed under the parking brake. His wet hands smeared the ink, but the bleeding script remained legible.

"Okay, I know where that is," he said. "I should be there soon."

He started the car. The engine rumbled to life, barely audible in the din as he shifted into first gear and turned the wiper blades on. They worked overtime, swish, swish, swishing back and forth with such rapidity that the entire car jerked with them, and it was **still** hard to see out. He squinted. The parking lot exit was to the left. He pressed the accelerator and let up on the clutch, but as soon as the car lurched forward, Derek groaned.

"Oh, God, stop," he said. "Stop!"

Mark braked, barely out of his parking space, but suddenly enough that the wheels squeaked. Derek fumbled with the door handle, hands shakily running and slipping along the length of it, until he finally managed to pop the door open. He leaned out of the car and spilled his stomach contents onto the pavement. Rain poured in through the gap between the seat and the doorframe, dumping onto Derek and Derek's seat, all while Derek heaved. And heaved. And heaved.

When Derek leaned back into the car and closed the door, he panted, wiping his mouth with the back of his shaking hand. A red, ruddy blush smeared his face, and his eyes glinted, fever-bright in the darkness. Water dripped from his hair, his face, everywhere.

"Y'did this on purpose," he slurred.

"What are you talking about?"

"I hate you," he said, his voice thick with emotion, dark, twisting. And then he turned to stare out the window.

"Derek, I don't know what you think I'm doing, but you needed to talk. How else was I supposed to do it? We always used to go barhopping."

Mark smiled at a brief flash of memory, him and Derek, sipping beers at the ESPN Zone in Manhattan, watching the game, just hanging out. He remembered cruising the streets, doing all manner of stupid stunts in college, towing Derek along for the ride. Derek had never been much of a mischief-maker by himself. He was a worthy accomplice, though. At least he had been.

Then Derek had finally made it through his residency, gotten his own private practice. Started getting buried in the work. Mark had too, to be fair. Their lives became about their surgeries, and the fun on the side bled out of their evenings, slowly over time. Until Derek was barely talking to Addison, barely talking to Mark outside of work, barely coming home at night. Mark and Derek hung out only rarely on the weekends. Best friend became a title more than an active membership. Addison got lonely. And, one night, Mark had stopped by to drop something off for Derek, some stupid form for a patient, and Addison had been home, alone. Things had happened. Alcohol had made them brave. Feelings they had repressed came pushing and shoving to the surface. They'd started noticing each other, noticing each other in the moments when Derek wasn't there. It had been painful. It had been wrong. He'd known it had been wrong. And yet, he hadn't been able to stop himself from running toward the cliff.

Then came the night where the cliff had met him head on and sent him sailing over the edge. He had been spilling himself into Addison, his world toppling over, and suddenly Addison had been sobbing, freaking out, hitting him, telling him to get off, get off, get off. Still in the throes of it all, he'd turned around, eyes glassy with lust, pain, and surprise, and found Derek staring, slack-jawed, his hand still on the doorknob, wedding ring glinting in the dim light. Derek had walked away only for a moment before reappearing, his face creased with nauseated rage as he tore Addison's clothes from the closet. Ripped the sheets from the bed. He'd left with her things, thrown them out onto the landing in the rain, rain much like the downpour pounding Seattle to the ground that very moment. Addison had thrown a t-shirt on, run after Derek, pleaded, begged. Mark had been so overwhelmed he'd just stayed upstairs, listening to the yelling as it throbbed through the walls. And then the yelling had stopped. The door had slammed. And Derek had gone. How did you apologize for something like that? .

It had been a train wreck. A train wreck from college to finish.

"Things are different," Derek mumbled.

"Well, how is it different? Just tell me, Derek. I miss my family. Somewhere along the line, we busted something, and it was long before I slept with Addison if you really think about it."

There was silence. When he looked over, Derek had his eyes shut and his forehead leaned against the window. Fog clawed along the glass with each breath, which came even and steady. For a brief moment, Mark found himself disappointed. He'd been getting somewhere tonight. Sort of. Even if half of it was nonsensical, this was the most Derek had ever talked to him since Mark had arrived in Seattle.

Mark reached across and felt for a pulse. Normal enough. Sleeping it off, then.

He drove to Meredith's house, pulling up along the curb when he saw that the driveway was full of cars already. Looking at the house, he frowned, double checked the address, and frowned again. The windows glowed in the darkness. It looked cozy. Far from Derek's upscale townhouse in Manhattan. Something he hadn't expected at all.

He got out, stepping into the frothy rain. He walked around to the other side of the car, opened the door, and shook Derek. For several moments, Derek didn't wake. Then he blinked and came to awareness like a bear coming out of hibernation.

"We're here, Derek. Can you get out of the car?"

Derek nodded. He fumbled with the seatbelt, cursing. He reached for the edge of the door, his hands slipping and sliding along it as he grasped at it, but couldn't quite gain purchase with his impaired coordination and the slickness of the wet surfaces. He stood, swaying like a grass stalk in the breeze, and looking like he was about ready to vomit some more. Mark reached out to steady him, but Derek hissed.

"Don' help me," Derek said.

Mark put his hands up in surrender and backed off, only staying close enough to catch Derek if he decided to tag team with gravity. Derek stumbled, weaved, shuffled to the door. He reached for the keys in his pocket, missed twice, finally grasped them, and then stood flummoxed at the whole pile of them in his hand.

Mark forced himself not to help as Derek searched ineptly for the correct one. Derek picked a key from the mess, a rusty gold one, and stabbed it at the lock like a knife, missed, stabbed again, missed, and continued, cursing, until Dr. Stevens opened the door.

"Dr. Shepherd," she said, darting to the side as Derek stumbled into the house, a victim of his own unexpected momentum.

Shuffling past her, Derek didn't reply. He weaved up the steps, leaning heavily on the railing, and disappeared without word.

"Here are his wallet and his cell phone," Mark said, handing them to Dr. Stevens.

She looked at the wallet and cell phone, both dripping, looked upstairs, and looked back at him, also dripping. A small puddle formed on the floor around his feet. He stepped back onto the welcome mat.

"What on earth happened?" Dr. Stevens asked.

"I took him out for a drink. Didn't realize he hadn't eaten."

She pumped her fist. "I knew it!"

"What?"

"Never mind."

"Okay…" he said, his voice dripping with doubt. Whatever… "We need to keep an eye on him. I'm worried about what the lack of food in his system will do. I don't want delayed onset alcohol poisoning. Do you think we could get him to eat something? Saltines maybe?"

She nodded. "We might have some stuff in the kitchen. Let me check."

She disappeared and came back with a tray of graham crackers. "I can take care of this, Dr. Sloan," she said. "Thank you for driving him home."

"You're sure?" Mark looked doubtfully up the stairs.

"Yes," Dr. Stephens said.

"Okay…"

Dr. Stevens turned and thumped up the steps, not seeing him out. It was a firm dismissal if he ever saw one. But he stayed there on the welcome mat, dripping, staring at the homely foyer. It was all… retro-looking… browns and earth tones, no chic blacks and whites to be found anywhere. A tiffany lamp sat propped on an end table in the living room. Derek lived here? And liked it? It was so… not posh. Not… Derek.

Or was it?

There was some noise coming from upstairs. He heard Dr. Stevens knock on a door. "Dr. Shepherd? Dr. Shepherd!" she said. A door slammed. There was some shuffling. Another door slammed, followed by the distinct sound of somebody being very, very ill.

Mark felt a pang. He swallowed against it.

"I'll never let you take me drinking again," he remembered Derek saying. It had been just after Derek had turned 21. Mark had already reached that age a few months before. They'd gone to a bar and gotten smashed. Utterly smashed. They'd stupidly tried to walk home, and a cop had picked the both of them up for public inebriation. They'd spent the night in jail. And Derek had been sick for most of it. "I hate being drunk," he'd said. "I hate it. I hate not being able to figure out where my feet are going. I hate it when the room spins and I can't stop it. Tipsy is fine. Drunk is not. And I'm never letting you take me drinking again." They'd had that fight as they'd walked out of the police station, hung over, sunlight stabbing at them with bitter, painful knives.

But they had, they had kept on going. Derek always made a point of stopping before he got too sloshed. Mark never cared. It was just nice to have the company. The family.

God, that had been such a long time ago. He laughed at the memory. Where had that gone? That Derek and that Mark had been best friends. Before med school. During med school. During residency. Mark had been the best man at Derek's wedding. He'd always assumed Derek would be the best man at his. But somewhere along the way, something had broken. Somewhere.

And then they were just colleagues.

And then he was the guy that screwed his best friend's wife. The woman he'd watched Derek kiss at the front of a big, flowery church, all his sisters, his mother, the people Mark thought of as his family. And it still hadn't stopped him.

His stomach curled at the stupidity of it all. Damn it, now **he** wanted a drink.

He finally turned to leave, only to find himself staring at Meredith Grey, haggard, sopping, her key poised to open the lock.

"What are you doing here?" she asked.

He didn't know the answer.


	9. Chapter 9

**Author's Notes: Thanks so much for all the feedback everyone :) I've been trying to reply to every one individually, but if I've missed anyone, please, please accept my heartfelt thanks for all the kind words and encouragement! Watching My Favorite Mistake on Thursday was a real treat for me. It will be exciting to see where Grey's goes that differs from my own storyline, but I'm so happy they seem to be addressing Derek's issues seriously! My personal goal is to get this story done before the next new episode, so more and more new canon isn't getting in the way of this story and my inspiration for it. Yay for goals, huh :P Anyway, I hope you continue to enjoy!**

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Meredith stared at Mark. He stood there, his threadbare red t-shirt almost see-through from the sopping load of rainwater that it had soaked up. His jeans were dark and wet. A puddle of water had formed on the floor next to the welcome mat. 

For a moment, he looked surprised. His eyes widened, just enough to make it noticeable. One of his eyebrows quirked. A drop of water pooled and bulged at the tip of his goatee before surrendering to gravity, landing on the floor with a plop. He inhaled two short breaths. And then it was all gone behind a mask of smirk. 

"Well, if it isn't my favorite dirty mistress!" he said, as if the fact that he stood there, drenched with rainwater, in her house, where Derek lived, was perfectly normal.

Meredith pushed past him through the door. "What are you doing here, Mark? Derek will flip out if he finds you here." It actually made her nervous that Derek might find him there. Mark had been the subject of some contention lately, especially with the race for Chief of Surgery. And having Mark there, in the house, well, it was bad. A bad, bad thing. And, if irony served her as it always did, like a cruel, vengeful waitress that hadn't been tipped properly, Derek would come home just about now, miraculously ready to talk about all of his problems, only to see Mark standing there, two very short feet from Meredith, dripping wet, in a disgustingly hot, see-through shirt, and it would all go to hell. The second level. Where she would reside for the rest of her days in eternal torment.

"And here I thought we had such a connection..." Mark said.

"Mark, you're funny. And you're actually a nice guy, sort of, but I don't want to be picking up body parts if Derek finds you here. Seriously, what's up?" she asked as she put her keys on the stand beside the door. She was wet from the rain. Wet, and tired from walking, walking for hours. She wanted to go to bed, wanted to not think about her mother sitting in a jar on the dining room table. She wanted Mark to leave, so she could sleep and not have to deal with Derek screaming at her about Mark being there in their house, at their threshold. She wanted him gone. Before irony came bouncing in with the burnt appetizers.

"Actually, I brought Derek home," he said.

"What?" she asked.

Mark shrugged. "He got sloshed. I brought him home."

Meredith raised an eyebrow. It seemed that irony had skipped the appetizer and gone straight to the overdone, charred, vomit-inducing main course. "He went drinking. With you?"

"Is that so hard to believe?"

"Well, yes..."

Thumps followed as Izzie came down the steps, skipping every other one. "Meredith! Where have you been! I got home and all your things were still on the table in the kitchen, but you were gone. I was actually getting worried."

"I was out walking."

"For hours?"

"I had a compelling need to walk, or something."

"Right..."

There was a thud upstairs. Meredith looked up in the direction the noise had come from as the beginnings of dread began to form. "How sloshed?" she asked.

Izzie cleared her throat and looked at the floor. Mark, arrogant Mark, was suddenly avoiding her gaze, looking for all the world like a scolded, wet puppy. 

"How sloshed!" Meredith repeated.

"Well," Mark said, his voice cautious, hesitant. "We're watching to make sure he doesn't pass out again."

"Again?" she exclaimed. "That implies to me that there was a first time!" She shook her head. "You know what? Never mind. Mark, go home," she growled as she trudged up the stairs. 

She glanced in the bedroom, noticed that the door to the private bathroom was conspicuously shut. A tray of graham crackers lay on the bed, untouched. The crackers sat arrayed in a flowery spiral pattern, a mark of Izzie if she'd ever seen one. She entered the bedroom and closed the door behind her, knowing Izzie would probably be hovering just outside, listening as soon as Mark was gone. 

She knocked on the bathroom door. "Derek?" she whispered. When no answer came, a spike of worry poked her. Derek drunk? she thought, confused. Drunk and already blacked out at least once. Derek didn't get drunk. Never, except that first time they'd met, when they'd talked and just kept ordering more, laughing, having a great time that had blurred and suddenly ended up at her house. But that had been a happy drunk, beyond tipsy, but only just. Not an I'm passing out now, please catch me while I vomit drunk. And Derek getting drunk with Mark? Derek didn't even speak to Mark, at least not nicely.

She turned the knob, relieved to find it wasn't locked.

Derek sat on the floor, curled up against the wall, his knees hugged to his chest. His dark navy scrubs gripped him, soaked and flat against his shivering form, and his white lab coat sat in a wrinkled puddle by the tub. His hair dripped. Flecks of rain dotted his skin, wandered down his face. Another puddle had formed on the floor underneath him, though the bathmat appeared to have soaked up a considerable amount already. 

He looked up at her, sort of. His gaze, which was strangely vacant, didn't quite meet her own, though whether that was because he couldn't focus, or because he didn't want to, she couldn't be sure. "Derek, you're sopping wet," she whispered.

"So're you," he slurred. The stench of alcohol rolled off his breath. 

She ignored him, pulling his towel off the rack behind the door. She sat next to him and wrapped it around him, rubbed it up and down, trying to soak up as much of the water as she could. When the towel was saturated, she threw it to the side. She sat behind him, her legs forming a v, and pulled him back into her arms. He shivered, and his head ticked as she wrapped her arms around him, put her cheek against his neck.

"What happened, Derek?" she asked, staring over his shoulder. He sat, meek in her arms, almost as though he wasn't able to move. She felt water seeping into her clothes, but she didn't care.

"Mark," he said, his voice rough.

"Are you still feeling sick?" she asked.

"Nothing left to be sick with," he answered with a hint of a shrug. 

They sat there, silent. She rubbed his chest and stomach, until he shivered, breaking the spell of quiet. She shook her head. He needed to get out of the wet clothes. Why had she let him languish on the cold tile floor in a pool of water? Stupid, Meredith...

"Okay, Derek, come on." She yanked up under his shoulders, urging him up. She grunted under the strain of his weight as she helped him stumble to his feet, helped him shuffle back to the bed where he collapsed gratefully with a moan, barely missing the tray of graham crackers with his feet. She rescued the tray and put it on the chair by the window. 

She pulled off his shoes first. Next came his wet socks, first the left and then the right. She worked her fingers at the joints of his toes, trying to warm them up a little. She undid the bowknot made from the drawstring of his scrub pants and pulled those down, not sure whether to be worried or not that he wasn't even bothering to joke with her as she stripped him, wasn't making some snide comment about her trying to take advantage of him. She would have been happy with any comment at all, snide or otherwise. But he didn't even smirk. A drunken, not-all-there stare hooded his gaze, and he let her do whatever. 

"Sit up," she said, which he did, barely. She pulled his scrub shirt up over his arms and let him collapse back down to the bed. She felt his boxers. Those were soaked too. She pulled them off, tried not to wantonly stare, though it was difficult, and yanked the bedspread out from under him. She pulled up the blankets and was able to think again.

Someone rapped on the door to the hallway. "Meredith," Izzie whispered, her voice muffled through the door. "Try and get him to eat. He hasn't had anything in days, apparently."

Meredith glanced at the graham crackers. So that was what they were for. She took the tray over to the bed. "Can you eat, Derek?"

He stared at her, nostrils flaring. He got one whiff of the crackers and rolled over so his head was hanging off the side of the bed. He heaved dry heaves, and nothing came up. That didn't make them any less miserable to experience. She knew from vast amounts of past tangoing with the whole I'm drunk thing. She rubbed his back, felt his muscles flex and twitch as he tried to give up something his stomach just didn't have anymore. His skin held the chill of the rain.

"Okay, not now, but tomorrow, you have to eat something, Derek."

"Makes me sick," he grumbled. He rolled onto his back and scrubbed his hands at his face. At least he was showing some semblance of coordination. The gaze that stared back at her was more put together, more focused.

"After the alcohol is done tearing you up, not now," she said, misunderstanding him.

He shook his head. "Food's been making me sick," he explained.

"Even when you're not drunk?"

"Yeah."

"Do you think you're getting the flu or something?"

"No."

"But Derek," she protested.

He gave her a woeful, tortured look. "I'll try," he said. "Tomorrow, I'll try... Just not now." He groaned and closed his eyes for a moment. 

"Will you talk to me, Derek?" she asked.

He raised his hands to his forehead, winced, and shook his head, his eyes never opening. "Not now. Please, not now."

Not now, not now, not now. That phrase seemed to be his new modus operandi. She wanted to complain, wanted to pester him, make him talk, but she bit back the desire with some effort. He would talk when he was ready, she assured herself. And she didn't want to be a nag. She didn't. Nagging was bad, and annoying, and it would probably make him go away. Something she didn't want.

"Okay," she replied. "Do you want some water and some ibuprofen? It will help with the hangover tomorrow."

"Yeah," he said.

She got up and went into the bathroom. She bit her lip, rifling through the medicine cabinet for the bottle of ibuprofen. She and Izzie swapped it back and forth for cramps, so it tended to migrate. She found it on the third shelf stacked up next to her birth control pills, pulled the bottle out, and popped four pills from it. She knew from experience that two hardly did anything for this sort of thing. She filled the glass that sat on the side of the sink with cool tap water and returned to the bedroom.

Derek lay there, breathing even, mouth slightly open. She almost thought he was asleep, but his eyes drifted open, he turned to her, and gave her a fleeting half-smile. He sat up, much more collected than he had been before. She handed him the glass and the pills. He popped the first ibuprofen into his mouth and slugged it down, followed by three quickly repeated motions as he swallowed the others. He worked at the rest of the water with a bit more caution, taking slow, steady sips every few seconds, testing to make sure he wasn't going to be sick again. He stopped when the glass was half empty. He leaned his forehead against the cool glass, loosing a guttural moan. "Hate bein' drunk," he muttered.

"When you're drunk enough to not know you're drunk, it's kinda nice," Meredith said, suddenly burning with questions again. Why Mark of all people? And why did he let himself get wasted if he knew he hated it?

She forced the questions away while he sat there against the headboard, rolling the glass along his forehead shakily. She changed out of her wet clothes, and then crawled under the covers with him. He set the glass on the nightstand with a wobble. She pulled him into an embrace. His entire body was cold. "Derek, you're freezing," she said.

"And you're really warm?" he said, and his question ending in an incredulous choke as she brushed his calf with her toes.

"Okay, you got me there," she said.

He squirmed away from her icy feet and flipped on his side to face her. They lay that way for several minutes, silent, just watching each other, until he broke it, broke the moment.

"I want you," he said.

She raised an eyebrow. "Now?"

"Yes, now."

"But you're drunk..."

"Mere. I need this."

"Okay... But you have to brush your teeth. Because, seriously, Derek..."

He glowered at her, threw the covers back, and dragged himself to the private bathroom, considerably more coordinated than he'd been a little while ago, though he was still weaving a bit. She couldn't help but stare as he made the trip, gloriously naked. He had such a fine, fine ass...

She swallowed.

He stepped into the doorway, facing her, toothbrush in his hand. He made a point of staring at her, just staring wolfishly as he brushed his teeth, loud, exaggerated, slow. His entire body twitched opposite to the stroking motions of his toothbrush hand. He looked stormy, almost angry. She tried not to let her gaze drop lower than his face, but slowly, she found it dipping, dipping. He was so...

He disappeared back into the bathroom, leaving her staring at the empty space where he had been, panting with sudden want. She heard him as he spat his toothpaste out, rinsed with water, spat again. And then he reappeared, leonine, muscles flexing. He was back in the bed with her before she could blink. His hand slipped under the waistband of her shorts, between her legs, and he cupped her. He used the heel of his hand to press down and rub at just the right spot. She arced into it, suddenly without will, and he came down on top of her, his lips against hers in a minty crush of desperate need.

"You're mine," he said, growling as she panted. "Right now, you're mine." 

He pulled her shorts down, clawed at her shirt, his fingers shaking, fumbling, until she helped him with it and it landed somewhere beside the bed with a hollow thud. So, he wasn't all put back together yet, she thought, but the thought streaked away when he bent down and kissed his way from the bend of her knee, up along her thigh, weaving in a meandering trail, working and teasing at the skin, until she couldn't stand it anymore, begged him to go just a bit higher where she throbbed, waiting to be touched. But he bypassed that, went up to her bellybutton, made a slow, scorching circle, and wandered up, up. His hand went down below again as he suckled her, made her pucker up from the stimulation. And then he was at her mouth again, whispering, growling, "Mine, you're mine," over and over in a desperate litany. 

She sucked on his lip, his tongue, until his words melted away in a groan and he pulled away. "No," he said.

He pushed up against her, and they moved like the swell and crush of a wave. Spots flared across her view in a brilliant explosion as he moved his index finger, just right, just at the spot where... He drew a moan from her, pulled it out like he was the conductor of an orchestra and she was his violin section. She felt the length of him, rubbing up against her, teasing as he made her quiver with no more than a touch. They moved and rocked, slipped along each other like dancers. 

She reached down and cupped him. His eyes went glassy, his breaths strained and tortured. "Let me do this," he said, groaned, sighed, and he pushed her away.

Confusion pummeled the corners of her awareness, until he ripped her thoughts away with his hands and worked her into a moaning, pleading, tangled mess. She twitched, and squirmed, until all she could do was beg him to let her collapse into the rush, help her finish, but every time she got there, climbed, clawed, frenzied her way to the pinnacle, he would stop, pull back. She would be stuck there for painful moments, gazing blurrily, longingly, panting with want at the freefall waiting for her, and then she would slip a few feet back. After breathless, tortured moments, he would start her climbing again. Climb, fall back. Climb, fall back. Until she couldn't think. Couldn't think about anything but where his hands were in relation to where she needed them to be. She wanted him to fill her. So. So. Badly. She flailed at him, trying to get him to let her release, but he wouldn't. 

"Derek," she sobbed as he built her up into another intense wave of pleasure, only to pull her down into frustration again.

It was mind-numbing. Relentless. Glorious, and yet so painful she couldn't make two plus two add up to four anymore. "Derek, please," she begged. "Please, Derek, please."

"Mine," he said. Kept saying. "Ask me," he said.

"Please, let me, let me, let me," she whined.

"No," he said.

When he finally pushed inside of her, she thought that she would collapse in a puddle of moaning, panting need. She screamed, twitched in a mess of useless, out-of-control spasms as he began to thrust. She screamed again, but it grated, waned, scorched back down her throat like each word was serrated, until it all fell into the relative silence of a pant, pant, pant. He crushed his mouth onto hers, kissed her jaw line, her neck, anything. Dizzy, unrelenting lust pounded at her, making it impossible for her to keep tabs on everything he did. It was just a solid block of ups and downs, ups and downs.

"Ask me now," he said again, after time had stretched beyond the point of reason, and she hung stuck in its oblivion, needing, wanting, and breathless for the swells of pleasure between the dips of blinding, hysterical, torturous desire.

"Please," she replied, her voice a hoarse whisper. "Please. Let me finish. Let me..."

"Okay," he whispered, the word brushing against her ear like a caress. He reached down, mid thrust, touched her just right. One flick and roll of his finger, and she found herself in a spiral. Her lower abdomen exploded as everything released at once in a dizzying, crazy spill of falling, falling, falling. She felt herself clenching, pulsing along his length, couldn't stop herself as she writhed, pulled her teeth back in a satisfied grimace. He moaned and continued to go, to pull in, pull out, pull in, pull out.

She lay there, numb, panting, watching the stars circle lazily overhead, just like the cartoons, almost unable to respond as he let himself finish just after the frenzy had left her. She felt him jerk inside her. Felt the cool seep of his release. And all she could do was stare, her mouth slightly agape. Her breath knocked against the back of her incisors. She panted, trying to catch her breath.

Derek pulled out of her and collapsed.

They both lay there, not talking, just breathing.

Until finally the roar subsided, and she could think again, albeit only simple thoughts. "Derek, that was... What was that?"

"Good, I hope," he said.

"Wonderful," she purred. "But what was it?"

"I don't know what you mean," he replied.

"You wouldn't let me touch you," she said.

He shrugged. "Can't I do something just for you?"

She swallowed, rolled on her side, and gazed at him. He stared at the ceiling. Sure, he could do that for her anytime he wanted, but he'd said before they'd started that he needed this. He wanted her. She'd obliged, happily, but it had definitely been about him. Not her. So what was up with that?

"Derek, you can do that anytime. But-"

"Then what does it matter?" he snapped.

She let out a breath in frustration. "It matters because I love you, Derek. And something is wrong."

"Say that again."

"What?" she asked. "Something is wrong?"

"No..." he turned to her, his eyes lost and pleading. "Say..."

"I love you?"

His eyes dipped shut at the words, as though she'd drugged him with the mere sound of the syllables. A smile curled his lips. "That, yes," he said with a sigh.

"I love you, Derek."

He nodded. After a few moments, his eyes oozed open, and he stared at her. His gaze held a dark, wanting, primal something in them. She stared back, trying to figure him out, to grab on to anything he would give her in his expression to understand what was going on, what was running through his mind. But there was nothing, nothing she could interpret. "Can we just... not talk right now?" he said.

"When will be a good time, Derek?"

"I don't know. I just... can't. Not now."

"Okay. Okay. We'll do the not talking thing," she said. She tried not to say anything else. She tried not to be a pest. She tried to respect his wishes, his need for space. But she had to add, "But you need to eat in the morning."

"Okay," he replied. He didn't sound annoyed or aware of her inner struggle, which was enough for her.

She curled up against him. Neither of them was cold anymore. It was easy to drift off to a deep, sated sleep.


	10. Chapter 10

Derek lay sprawled across the bed on his stomach, his head buried under his pillow, his arm across her when she woke. It was nice to wake up and have him there again, even if it was a bit drug-induced, even if he was hogging his side of the bed and most of hers, even if... Well, it was just nice. He didn't stir as she rolled out from under his wayward arm. His hand flopped inanimately onto the bed without her there to support it. It rested at an awkward angle where her abdomen had been. The soft sounds of his breath, pushing in and out with each rise and fall of his torso, made her smile. No nightmares last night, it seemed. At least he would get some sleep, real sleep. Maybe.

She threw on her discarded clothes after collecting them from the floor, but found herself drawn back to the bed to watch him. Slumber had removed him from the world, and she found herself marveling at, discounting his breathing, how utterly still and quiet he was. She sat and watched him for a moment, enjoying that for once, the tables were turned, that she was the one staring with a quirky smile on her face while he slept instead of the other way around. 

The sound of the paper delivery broke the spell. She heard the car drive by, followed by a rhythmic smacking as the driver threw papers out the window to each house up and down the street. It was late today. She glanced at the clock. 6 AM. Despite the fact that Derek's shift started in an hour, she decided to let him sleep, knowing that as soon as he opened his eyes, he was in for a world of misery. 

She closed the window blinds to keep the light out. Light was like knives. She would do what she could, at least, to stop him from clawing his eyes out when he woke up. She brought out the bottle of ibuprofen from the private bathroom. She grabbed the half-empty glass of tap water from last night, rinsed it out, refilled it, and placed it on the nightstand on his side of the bed with the ibuprofen. 

After taking one last glance at the darkened room, she wandered downstairs, blinking what remained of sleep from her eyes.

Izzie was scrambling some eggs. They hissed as she scraped at them with a spatula. A pot boiled on the burner across from the frying pan with the eggs, and a huge stack of toast sat on a plate in the center of the kitchen island. "Good morning," she said, looking up briefly from her task. "I'm leaving soon. I just wanted to whip something up for you guys. I threw together some soup, and toast, and eggs..." She ticked them off on her fingers, one, two, three. "Those were the only things I could think of that would be really easy on the stomach. Can you think of anything else? I couldn't think of anything else..." 

Meredith shook her head. "Thanks, Izzie," she said as she pulled up a chair to the center island. "I think I'd totally starve without you around at this point."

Izzie smiled and shrugged. "I cook. It's my hobby. No big deal. Is Dr. Shepherd... Is he okay? You sounded okay toward the end last night."

Meredith blushed. "Sorry, I was a bit noisy, I think."

Izzie smiled. "Well, you didn't go all night, at least," she said. "I'm just glad I got Mark, I mean Dr. Sloane, out of the house before you two had at it. He stayed for coffee. He's actually kind of nice, outside of work. And hot. There's a lot of hotness there. Anyway, hello, that was surprising."

"The hotness?"

"The fact that he's nice. At work, he's an ass."

Meredith raised an eyebrow, but Izzie looked away, so she grabbed a piece of toast from the pile. She spread some of the fake butter on it from the tub that sat beside the plate. "Do you have any idea what happened last night?" Meredith asked, gracefully dodging the subject of Mark. She took a bite of toast. It melted in her mouth, and she sighed. 

Izzie shrugged. "Not a clue. When the phone rang, I thought it would be you, but it was Mark, Dr. Sloane, wanting directions. Last I'd seen Dr. Shepherd, he was doing a hemispherectomy. I wandered through the gallery while he was closing."

Meredith nodded and took another bite. 

"So, seriously, where were you yesterday?" Izzie asked.

Meredith looked down into her lap. "I was walking."

"Yeah, you mentioned that."

"Thatcher came by yesterday." She shrugged. If there was one definitive good thing about last night, it was that it had erased the crappiness of the day from her memory, if only for a while. "He sort of... dropped off my mother's urn."

"Oh."

"Hence the intense need for walking," Meredith said with a sigh.

"That's that ugly bottle on the dining room table, I take it."

"Yeah."

"I was wondering about that. So was Mark. He commented that it didn't match the décor at all. At least I didn't submit to curiosity and open it." Izzie snorted. Laughed. Giggled. Breathed hard. And then stopped. "Sorry, I have inappropriate reactions to stress."

"I'm not really sure what to do," Meredith said.

"Pick a pretty spot to spread the-"

"I mean about Derek," Meredith interrupted. "My feelings about my mother can just hop in the big, winding line."

"Oh," Izzie said. "Well, I'd start with trying to get him to eat something."

"Yeah, I guess."

Izzie glanced at her watch. "I have to run. Will you be all right?"

"Yeah."

"Call me if you need help... with something," Izzie said as she walked out the door, closing it softly behind her.

Meredith started a load of dishes while she waited. When the clock had reached 7AM and Derek still hadn't woken up, Meredith called in sick for him. He finally stumbled downstairs at noon, after she'd done the laundry, dusted, and washed the windows. 

He looked awful. He'd managed to throw on his boxers and a wrinkled t-shirt, but they hung at awkward angles against him, making him appear unkempt, sort of windswept. His hair stuck out in twisty streaks of wayward curl. Dark circles clung to the skin under his eyes. Stubble dusted his pores. His skin looked bleached of life.

"Good morning," she said. He gave her a bleary glare that said better than any words could ever say that it was not morning and it was not good. But bad afternoon had never seemed like a suitable greeting, at least not for anything Hallmark. She shushed and let him grow accustomed to the fact that he was alive, not sleeping, and miserable in general.

He winced, moving stiff and stilted as he shuffled past the entryway and on to the fridge. He pulled out a carton of orange juice, tipped it back, and chugged. Straight from the lip of the carton. His Adam's apple rippled along his throat as he took hearty swallow after hearty swallow. Little bits of juice dribbled down from the corners of mouth, down his throat, spattered onto his shirt. Finally, he stopped for air, panting, and put the juice back into the fridge with a wobbly, shaky grip. He wiped his mouth off with a paper towel, and then he shambled back to the kitchen table where he collapsed into the seat with a groan. He folded over and laid his head on the table with a great, heaving sigh.

"Stop the carousel," he mumbled, eyes closed.

Meredith pulled her chair over. "Did you take the ibuprofen I left out?"

"First thing," he said. He heaved a great, shuddering breath and opened his eyes, which was followed promptly by a wince. He let his eyes slide shut again.

"You're sick today, by the way," Meredith said.

He jerked in his seat, an ironic, irritated chuckle ratcheting out of him. "Understatement," he replied.

"I mean I called you in sick. I hope you don't mind."

"Oh," he said. "No, I don't mind."

"So, what happened?" she asked, pulling up a chair across from him.

"Mark bodily removed me from my office."

Meredith raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"I followed him to the bar. After that, it's fuzzy. Did he drive me home?"

"But why did you go out with Mark? I thought you hated Mark."

"Hell if I know," he said with a shrug.

"Well, Izzie made some soup for you. Let me heat it up."

He groaned.

"What?" she asked. "Still nauseated?"

He nodded.

"Derek, I'm really getting concerned. You have to eat..."

"I'll try," he said through gritted teeth, his voice grating, low-pitched. He curled up into a sitting position, looking utterly wiped. He squinted at her.

She reheated the pot on the stove, letting the burner do the work. After it began to steam, she poured some of the soup into a bowl and brought it to him, sitting back down across from him to offer moral support. "If you can do juice, you can do soup. There's hardly any difference," she said, reasoning for her sake more than for his.

He stared at the bowl for a long moment, his face went three shades paler, and he pushed it away. 

"Derek," she said.

He shook his head. "No, no, just give me a moment." He pulled the bowl back.

He worked his way up to it slowly, finally taking a bite long after it had cooled off, and steam had stopped spiraling up from its surface. He chewed at the bite of vegetable like it was a piece of rubber, swallowed dramatically, and sat there, staring at the bowl as if he were debating the inner mysteries of the universe in relation to soup. He tried another bite after several minutes. And another. He stopped at four.

"Want some eggs? Or some toast?" she asked.

He shook his head and pushed the bowl of soup away. 

"You don't feel dehydrated, do you?" she asked. She leaned across the table and put the back of her hand on his forehead. He didn't feel sick to her, at least not feverish. But if he wasn't sick...

"No," he said.

"Still nauseated?"

"No," he said with a shrug. "Just not hungry."

"Well, humor me and finish it, Derek. You're scaring me. You're really, truly scaring me."

He looked at her, and his gaze collapsed under a hood of shame. His shoulders slumped. His whole posture wilted like a starving flower, which she hadn't thought was possible, given how curled over he'd already been. "I'm sorry," he said. He pulled the bowl back toward him and finished it, taking slow, deliberate bites.

"Thank you," she said.

He pushed the empty bowl away and settled his head back on the table with a sigh. 

Fidgeting, she watched him in silence for several minutes. Until the worry began to dribble over the edge of its simmering pot, until she just couldn't take it anymore. Why wasn't he talking? What was going on?

"So what's with the mopey thing?" she asked. "Come on, Derek. Give me something to work with here."

He shook his head and groaned. "Meredith, the room is spinning, I'm trying to keep this stuff down, and my head feels like it's been cracked in two and made into paste. Can we just not talk right now?"

"I thought you said you didn't feel sick."

"I didn't before. Can we please, please, just not talk right now?" He started to rub his temples with his index and middle fingers in long, slow circles. "Please, Mere, I'm begging."

But she watched him, sitting there, suffering, and she couldn't stop the tumble of words that shoved and stumbled out of her mouth. "Damn it, Derek," she snapped. "If not now, when? You keep pushing me away. I just want to help you. I know this has something to do with me, that this is my fault. If you'd just tell me, maybe we could work through it together."

He winced, looked like he was trying to melt away from her, but something in her had snapped, and it just didn't take the hint to stop, that stopping would be good.

"You know," she continued. "Together. Like we technically are, except we really aren't most of the time. Because, if you've noticed, we suck at talking. And I'm tired of it. I'm tired, Derek."

He stared. For a moment, just a moment, she'd thought she'd gotten through his thick Neanderthal cranium. But the moment burst into pieces when he blinked, raised his hands to his mouth, and bolted. She stood there, astonished at his sudden absence, an absence that remained like a ghost in the room. 

At first, she thought he had fled from her, her words, her presence. And then she heard the upstairs toilet flush. Guilt slammed into her as though she were the nail and it were the hammer striking her with a whack, whack, whack. She chased after him, breathless, ran up the steps, knocked on the closed bathroom door, frantic, upset. 

"Derek, I'm sorry," she said, her voice wobbling about like a toddler just learning to walk. Her lower lip trembled. Damn it. Damn it, damn it. She wasn't going to...

The door opened. He looked at her, hanging on the door handle, eyes glassy, skin blushed and feverish. "It's not your fault, Mere," he said. He stumbled forward, stumbled into her. She reached up to steady him, and he stood there, swaying.

"Yes it is," she said, her eyes pricking up with tears. Damn it. Damn it, she was crying. She hated crying. "I yelled. I yelled when you asked me not to. I'm trying not to be a nag. I'm trying. I am."

He pulled her into an embrace. "Shhh. It's not your fault at all, Mere. I'm just... I can't... I can't talk about this right now. Talking about it makes it worse. And I know that you want to. I know that you want to talk about it. And it kills me that I can't, but I-- I just... When I look at you..." His voice cracked, broke, shattered. She looked up and saw his eyes were watering, red. "When I..." He swallowed. "I'm just not ready," he said.

"And not talking makes it better?" She sniffled, taking refuge against his chest, listening to him breathe in and out. Things would be okay. They would be, she assured herself. But for the first time since her accident, she wasn't quite so sure. This Derek, this unhappy, sick, moping Derek... She didn't understand him. She wanted to, but she didn't. She didn't know how to fix it. And her heart ached for him.

He didn't answer. He held her. Rocked her back and forth, there in the doorframe. His hands ran through her hair.

"Do you need to go to the hospital?" she asked, reaching up to wipe away the stinging tears from her face. Her skin felt dry and cracked where the moisture evaporated. "You're going to get dehydrated and malnourished if you keep this up."

"I'm fine, Mere," he assured her.

You're not fine! You're anything but fine! And I'm scared... That was what she wanted to say. She didn't. She swallowed back the thick lump that formed in her throat. "Will you try to eat some more? I won't yell. I won't even watch."

"I'll try some toast," he said. "But only if you eat with me."

"Okay."

They walked downstairs together. 


	11. Chapter 11

The air buffeted them, whipping their lab coats back and forth. They stood at the edge of the hospital roof. Seattle sprawled out beyond the edges of the guardrails in a creeping latticework of roads and buildings, parks and plants, into the Sound, the water, which was still and gray in the distance. A light, misty drizzle had turned the air into a solid, wet curtain that dampened their skin, laid their hair flat against their heads. They stood in the far corner, behind a bend in the building where the wind from any oncoming helicopters would be broken. A bed of flowers and a bench sat facing the sunrise. It was a small place for hospital workers who just needed a break. 

"So, how does this work?" Cristina asked, turning to Meredith.

"I... don't know," Meredith said. "Should I say a few words?"

"Do you have any nice ones?"

"Well, can you think of anything at all?" Meredith asked. "I can't think of anything."

It was sort of a lie. She could. She could think of a lot of words. But not a lot of them were happy ones. Or even kind. She stared at the urn in her hands, not really sure what to do, feeling lost, alone. Her mother was gone. She still didn't know quite how to feel about that. And Derek wasn't there, and she didn't know quite how to feel about that either.

It had been a week and a half since the night Mark had brought him home. A week and a half. He still wasn't sleeping well, though he never mentioned it to her. She'd wake up in the middle of the night, and he'd be muttering, tossing, turning. She'd shake him, he'd suck down long, halting breaths, blinking the nightmares away furiously, and then they'd resettle. In the morning, he wouldn't mention it, would pretend nothing had happened. The circles under his eyes were becoming a permanent fixture. He'd looked haggard lately. Haggard and careworn and overtired. He spent a lot of time at work. And he still wasn't talking to her about it. 

He was eating, but only barely. After the war on toast, things had been a bit easier for him to get down, but only just. Sometimes she could get him to have a slice of fruit when they got home. She brought snacks to his office as often as she could. Sometimes he touched them. Sometimes he didn't. He skipped breakfast more often than not, opting instead for coffee or nothing at all. She found that worrisome. Every time she hugged him, she found herself surreptitiously running her hands along his torso under the guise of affection, trying to make sure he wasn't losing weight, that his skin was still supple and responsive to touch, that he wasn't dehydrated, or making himself sick...

She hadn't told him about this little outing with Cristina. He had enough to worry about. He didn't need to waste his energy on her, not when he had so little lately. That's what she'd told herself over and over for ten minutes that morning as they'd sat at the breakfast table in silence, her nibbling on cereal, him trying to wake up to the tune of coffee, copious dregs of coffee.

If only he would talk, one part of her moaned.

The other part was pining. She really, really missed having him there, at that moment, standing on the roof in the grayness.

"Meredith?" Cristina prodded.

Meredith glanced down at the urn, and then past it at the long, long drop, swallowing at the sudden vertigo the view brought. She backed up a step, startled, though she knew with the rail and the flowerbed there it would be very hard to fall. Even then, it made her nervous. Because she knew now, more than ever, that she didn't want it. 

"Sorry," she said, reaching up to rub the bridge of her nose with her free hand. "Mind wandered. Is it bad that my mind wandered when I'm holding my mother's ashes in a jar?"

Cristina shrugged. "Why are we doing this here again?"

"Because it's my mother," Meredith explained. "And the only thing she ever loved was this stupid hospital. So, I figured she might enjoy eternity here. Or something."

And that made sense. It did. Chief Webber was here, the only person Alzheimer's hadn't stripped away from her mother. The only person who seemed to be indelible in a fragile web of memories. Memories that included Meredith, but only Meredith the mistake. Not the Meredith that she was now. 

Meredith stared at her hands, and her brain was suddenly devoid of words, devoid of anything to say, anything at all, as if something had sucked them out of her like the last dregs of a precious daiquiri. An ambulance blared below somewhere. She heard distant voices, frantic as they tried to assess the patient being pulled out of the double doors amidst a flurry of activity. Doctors. Emergency medical technicians. Swarming like ants.

A brief flash seared her, and she saw a blurry image of Derek, panicking, crying, standing over her body, pushing his hands over her chest, muttering, a litany, "She's alive, she's alive, she's alive, she's all I have, she's alive..." His mouth came down onto hers, and she wanted to kiss him back, wanted it so badly, but she couldn't. She was dead. Dead, and cold, and gone. His breath filled her, only to release in a lifeless hiss. And then the picture faded, bled away like an impressionist watercolor, and she was back in herself again, staring at an old, unconscious man as they wheeled him out of the ambulance bay and into the emergency room.

She blinked, trying to focus. Projecting, she was just projecting. It hadn't happened.

"So, what should I say?" she asked. She shivered at the cold, wet air.

"I don't know, Meredith. She's your mother."

"Well, what would you say to your mother?"

"Meredith, we're not going to go there right now. I'm here for moral support. Not personal reflection."

Meredith shifted the urn in her hands. Okay. Okay, she could do this. She could think of last words that were worth a damn in the grand scheme of things. A strange sense of finality pounded on her shoulders. Last words. What on earth do you say to your dead mother if it's the last thing you're ever going to say?

"Hi, mom," she said.

Cristina gave her a thumbs-up. "That's a great start. Keep going."

"Cristina..."

"Sorry."

Meredith sighed and continued, trying not to feel ridiculous about talking to a bottle. It was just ashes. Just an object. This was more for her own closure than for anything else. 

"We're on top of Seattle Grace. You can see all the helicopters flying in with traumas from here. And there's a good view of the entire ambulance bay, which is a veritable turnpike for bloody accident victims. I think you'd like it. Maybe. Well, I hope you would."

"I like the view."

"Cristina..."

"Right. Moral support."

She thought about all the memories her mother had created for herself here and the fact that the Alzheimer's had ripped them away from her. This seemed like the most appropriate place to put her mother, where she could look down on all the things she'd forgotten and what little she had remembered. 

The world flashed as she looked down at the urn, flashed and disappeared, and then she was standing at the end of a hallway, a blurry, dark hallway with gurneys, and her mother was walking toward her in navy scrubs, looking determined. "You're anything but ordinary to me," Ellis Grey said, and then Meredith turned to run and run because she was desperate, desperate to get back. Snap, flash, and she was looking at Cristina looking down on her, and her friend's eyes watered with tears as Meredith struggled to say a word, any word. Ouch seemed the easiest. Meredith gasped, blinked, and the image vanished, leaving her standing on the roof, urn in her hand, best friend staring at her expectantly as the drizzle continued to dust them.

She brushed her hand across both cheeks. She was losing her mind. That was what.

"Are you okay, Mere?"

"It's nothing. Wishful thinking getting the better of me," Meredith said. Her hands ran along the grain of the urn. It was ridged, not smooth. 

"I know I disappointed you, but-," she began with a sigh. She thought back to the lucid day her mother had had, to the disparaging litany of pain her mother had dished at her about how much of a disappointment she was. About how unfocused she was. How... mushy. And she snapped. 

"You know what?" she said. "I do love Derek. And he doesn't make me wishy-washy. He completes me. My world is this huge, tumbling, morass of confusion, being an intern, being an adult, which both suck, by the way, not that you care, and when he's with me, the tumbling stops. That doesn't make me weak, or pathetic, or reliant, or unfocused... It makes me... Happy. Happy despite the crazy. I'm going to be an awesome surgeon, Mom. An awesome one. If it takes me some extra time to get there because I'm trying to figure out what I want, so be it. But it doesn't make me unfocused or crappy at what I do."

"You tell her, Meredith."

Meredith sighed. Just standing there, just thinking about all of this, it was exhausting. "I hate funerals."

"This isn't a funeral."

"It's close enough!"

"Mere, just say what you need to say. Tact is for wimps."

She sighed, frustrated that she couldn't say what she wanted to, couldn't find the words she wanted, but then she let the undertow of rage take her with it, and she couldn't stop. It was liberating. 

"I hate that you never got to know me after I finally cleaned myself up and went to med school," she said. And then she was ranting, ranting, and the words tumbled from her lips in one long, babbling discourse. 

"I hate it," she said as she began to pace. "I hate that the only thing you ever got to remember was Meredith the punk rebel, the one nobody ever talked about at family reunions, the one with the pink hair and black skirts and fishnet stockings and army boots, the Meredith that needed a curfew, yet never followed it. The Meredith that took off to Europe instead of to med school. I hate that you remembered the part of myself I least like to remember. I'm a surgeon now. A good one. I have a steady relationship with a really great, caring, successful guy. I have friends, wonderful friends. I have a life that doesn't usually suck, at least not these days. I'm happy to be alive, which, really, was the best thing about me dying, me figuring that out. And I'm pissed that you missed all of it. It's not fair! And it makes me angry." She found herself hoarse, hoarse from the shouting.

She looked at Cristina. "That's how I feel about my mother dying. I want to be remembered for who I am, not who I was, and she never will. That's it. In summary. That's it."

Meredith stood there panting as the words skittered to a stop, left her hollow and cold. The breeze whistled against the railing, ruffled her scrubs and her lab coat. She clenched her fingers around the urn, the cold, quiet urn. Her hair stuck in wet tendrils to her face. Drizzle flew everywhere, making it hard to see. 

Her mother wouldn't remember. And she hated it.

After long moments, the flush of anger left her. The panting, overwhelming breaths calmed. And she was just a daughter, standing on top of a building, trying to say goodbye to her dead mother. The anger seeped out of her bones and slipped away into the misty gray.

"Okay," Cristina said.

"All right then," Meredith replied.

She opened the urn and dumped its contents into the flowerbed. As she worked at them with the small trowel Cristina had brought, they disappeared. Disappeared into the soil. She sighed. And sniffled. And then she was crying again and cursing herself for it. Damn it. Why was she crying so much lately?

"It's okay to be upset, Mere," Cristina said.

"But it still sucks."

"I know."

She worked with the trowel until she couldn't see anything anymore, couldn't identify any part of her mother separate from the soil. She handed the trowel back to Cristina. They stood in silence for a few moments. And then Meredith turned, looking blearily at the exit door. 

She walked, walked, walked with Cristina following just behind, only to stop on the steps. She collapsed there on the first one. She sat and stared at her hands. The step was cold and uncomfortable, ridged at the tip to prevent tripping.

Cristina sat beside her without word.

After a long silence, Meredith turned to Cristina and asked, "Do you believe in near death experiences?"

Cristina's eyes widened, just a fraction, and then she narrowed them again. She stuttered on a syllable, just one, and then she was cool, collected Cristina. "I believe you could have had a very convincing dream..." she said.

"That's what I keep telling myself it was." Meredith picked at a suddenly interesting piece of lint on her scrubs. Amazing that after all this time, Doc's hair was still working its way through the dryer at home.

"Serotonin does some crazy stuff, Mere," Cristina said. "Maybe you saw things... But..." Her tone said it all to Meredith. That she thought it wasn't real. That she thought it was fake. That, while Cristina believed Meredith believed it, she didn't believe that Meredith had actually experienced anything. That every snippet of memory Meredith could grasp in her hand, what little she could replay, every blurry image -- all of it was conjured. Conjured by neurotransmitters released when the brain was dying. Her brain. When she'd been dead on the table. For over three hours.

She hadn't really seen her mother or anything else. It had been fake. The last desires of a dying surgical intern who'd been too stupid to swim.

"I just remember bits and pieces really," she said, feeling the need, the strange need, to tell someone, anyone about what she'd seen. And with what had been going on lately, Derek, as much as she wanted him to be the one she told, well... She didn't want to cause him more grief. That was the last thing she wanted, and she doubted he would deal well at all with even a mention of her death. "Just bits," she continued. "There's this flash of my mother, walking past me, hugging me as I run down a long, dark hallway. And I think I remember seeing Denny."

"Denny," Cristina said. "Izzie's Denny?"

"Yeah."

"You barely knew Denny..."

"I know." Meredith shrugged. "I don't pretend to understand it."

Cristina nodded, and they sat in companionable silence for a while. The stairwell to the roof was quiet. Activity only flooded it when a medevac helicopter was bringing somebody in for emergency treatment. And, that day, Seattle Grace was closed to medevac emergencies while they tested their broadcasting systems and response preparedness, or some such bureaucratic red tape like that. So, it was quiet and guaranteed to stay that way. That's why she'd chosen that day to dump the ashes.

Meredith took a breath. "Was Derek... really upset?" she asked.

She watched Cristina swallow and take a long, long moment to compose herself. "We all were," Cristina said, and the uncharacteristic way that her voice broke apart on the words sent a spear of guilt at Meredith.

Meredith tried to stop the sudden prick of tears. Again. "But you're not starving yourself. You're not having nightmares. I hope," she said.

"No."

She sighed, leaned over so that her torso rested on her knees and her arms stretched out to her toes. "I'm just trying to understand what's going on with him... I know he's upset. Upset that I died. But he won't talk with me."

"He was pretty shook up, Mere," Cristina said after a long pause. "What little I saw of him. It might be taking him time to... To cope."

Meredith gripped the soles and canvas of her Converse sneakers, squeezed them until her toes hurt. "I wish I knew how to help him."

"You could ask somebody in the psych department for ideas," Cristina suggested. "Dr. Prahbu, maybe. But I do know that sometimes the best thing for traumatic stress is to just let it run its course. Help him if he asks. But let him work it out on his own if he doesn't. You don't need to worry too much unless it continues for too long. And only it's been, what? Just less than a month, I think. Since you died."

"Do you think that's all it is? Traumatic stress?" Meredith asked. 

"Well, as much as my opinion as a heart surgeon counts... Yes." Cristina nodded. "It happens, Mere. People experience things that they can't handle, and they wig a little. He's got some of the classic symptoms."

"I guess. I just hate seeing him suffer like this, knowing that it's my fault."

"It's not your fault, Mere."

Meredith reached up, covered her face with her hands. She hadn't told Cristina, hadn't told Cristina all of the details. Everyone at Seattle Grace knew she'd been knocked in the water by accident, which was true, but they also thought, except Derek, that she'd simply been overcome by hypothermia too quickly to struggle. It was a reasonable assumption. She hadn't corrected anyone. And Derek didn't speak of it, ever. It was as if the moment she'd confessed to him was gone, cut out of his mind, excised. But then, they didn't seem to talk about anything lately.

And she needed it. Needed to talk. She found herself needing it to the point that it hurt. 

She rubbed her face, inhaled deeply, the aroma of her cinnamon-scented moisturizer pooling in the back of her throat. She swallowed. She pulled her hands away, sat up, and looked at Cristina, stared.

"It kind of is my fault," she confessed. "And Derek knows."

"Oh," Cristina said. And then her eyes widened, she swallowed, and her voice dropped an octave. "Oh..."

"It's not a moment I look back on fondly," Meredith found herself babbling, trying to explain. "I'm such an idiot. It's just that the water was cold. And I was so tired... And for just a second... Just one stupid second... I just... I just didn't want to swim. I didn't jump in on purpose, I fell. But I could have saved myself, maybe. I didn't even really try. And I can't believe I'm telling you. I didn't want to tell anyone." Babble, babble, babble.

"Mere..."

Meredith wilted. "I'm sorry. You didn't need to hear any of that."

"No," Cristina said. "No, Mere. I always need to hear that. You can always tell me this stuff. Always. Okay? Don't go jumping off bridges instead."

"Like I said, I have the enlightenment thing going for me now. I'm happy. To be here. I just wish Derek was happy about it."

Cristina raised a hand, awkward, hesitant. She held it there over Meredith's shoulder for a fraction of a moment before laying it to rest against Meredith's back. Warmth seeped through Meredith's scrubs. "I'm sure he's happy you're alive," she said. "The noisy sex Izzie keeps complaining about it should tell you that."

"Sometimes he has a funny way of showing it, aside from the sex, I mean," Meredith said, and then she was sniffling again, uncontrollably. Her eyes burned, and again, she was crying. "I hate crying," she said, her voice breaking.

"Want me to beat him up in the parking lot for you?" Cristina asked. "Because I could."

"Cristina..."

"Sorry, just trying to inject some humor. But I would beat him up if you asked me to."

"I know. Thanks. I think."

She stood, slowly, wobbly, she stood. Cristina followed suit. She looked at Meredith's empty urn and said, "Let's go drop your urn off at your locker. It'd be weird, you carrying that around."

"Okay," Meredith said.

And they walked down to the locker room without any more words.


	12. Chapter 12

She knelt by a man with a gushing thigh wound at the edge of the pier, oblivious to the rest of her surroundings. He watched, transfixed. Why was she treating that man so close to the water? That was dangerous. You never knew what a patient was going to do. You never knew who a patient actually was in a bad situation until the bad situation arrived.

"Meredith," he called, cupping his hands around his mouth to give himself some projection. "Let me help you take him to the triage center."

But she didn't look up. Didn't acknowledge him. His voice echoed and bounced away into oblivion, into the lapping of the water.

The man she was treating started to get agitated. He twitched. Protested. Derek looked all around, but nobody was watching her, not with the din, the mass of traumas, the bleeding, the noise, the crush of people, everywhere, doing a million different things. He blinked. He was the only one that saw her teetering on the edge of peril.

"Meredith!" he called.

He started running, but he wasn't getting any closer. Running, running...

The man freaked out and knocked her over the side of the pier with a spastic smack. Her ankle caught on the side, and her plummet paused, just for a moment, suspended, a promise not yet come to pass. His breath slammed into the back of his throat. Time stretched like a rubber band only to snap. And then she was gone, slipped out of view, disappeared. "Meredith!" he said.

He heard her screaming, screaming for help. "Derek!" she said. The end of the last syllable gurgled away as she swallowed water.

"Derek, wake up..."

He tried to run, he did. But he wasn't getting anywhere. The pavement underneath his feet was a treadmill. And nobody else was paying attention.

"Derek!" Meredith screamed again, and then her voice blotted out. There was a splash, and then nothing. The moment had arrived, and she had chosen to stop flailing, to stop trying.

"Meredith!" he yelled as he finally broke the treadmill and skidded to a halt at the edge of the pier. He looked over the edge into the still water. But she was gone, not even a ghost in the water, no bubbles from her passing, nothing. Gone. Erased. Disappeared.

"Derek, wake up!"

He jarred awake at the sudden touch against his arm. He yelled, startled, trying to blink away the image of Meredith falling into the water, the awful gurgle as the gray crush swallowed her whole. Darkness hovered across his field of view, blurry darkness that slowly shifted into Meredith's form. She hovered a foot away, just under the canopy provided by the second tier bed, looking down at him in the dim light, concerned, but all he could see was Meredith, pale and dead, and the dark of the room only made it worse, made the real Meredith seem apparitional. He drew a fist to his mouth and whimpered into it, and suddenly her arms were around him, rubbing his back, and he was enveloped in a blanket of soothing words. 

"Shhh," she said. "It's okay."

After a few moments, he collected himself and drew away. He grunted and coughed, trying to clear his throat of the thick ache of unshed tears, but the lump remained. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, exhaustion began to pound behind his eye sockets in a dull, pulsing throb. Go back to bed, go back to bed, go back to bed, each swell of pain told him. He squeezed his eyes shut and threw his legs over the side of the bed. The mattress squeaked as he shakily pushed himself to a sitting position, a position that forced his body to accept that he wanted it to wake up. He tensed, trying futilely to adjust as every joint lodged a bitter protest. Meredith watched him from her perch mid-way down the bed, silent, but he could feel her concerned gaze practically peeling his skin off it was so intent.

"What is it?" he said, snapped, though he didn't mean to. 

She frowned. "Derek, you have a corpus callosotomy. You weren't in the scrub room and you didn't answer your pages, so they sent me to find you."

"What?" He drew his watch to his face, fumbled with the nightlight on the side. It glowed blue at him, but the numbers remained blurry and indistinct. "That wasn't until four." He'd slipped in to the on-call room after a consult at two, just for a moment, just for a quick respite. Five minutes, he'd thought. Just five. He'd lain down on the bed, closed his eyes, so tired...

"It is four, Derek. Just after, actually."

He scrabbled his hands across his face, trying to rub the exhaustion away, but it soaked his skin, scarred him like a slash from a permanent marker. "Shit," he said, forcing his complaining muscles to let him stand up. His lower back twinged. He leaned on the bed frame, feeling like an old man as he surrendered his weight to it, tried to get used to being upright. The ache throbbed down to his bones, every joint. Go back to bed, go back to bed, go back to bed.

He hadn't slept well in nearly three weeks, and he felt like his mind was being dragged down by an undertow. Thinking was so, so hard sometimes. 

Meredith went to the doorway and flipped the light on. The sudden change stabbed his eyes. He screwed his eyes shut, groaned, and finally ratcheted himself to a full standing position. 

"Sorry," she said as she saw his reaction to the light.

"It's okay," he said. He opened his eyes, let the light bleed down to a reasonable level as his pupils finally figured out what was going on. Meredith stood, leaning against the doorframe, her arms crossed, a fat, green apple clutched next to her bicep. He shuffled to the door, but wheeled to a stop when she tugged on the back of his scrubs.

He turned, an eyebrow raised, only to find his hands caught in her warm grip. For a moment, she paused, and he soaked in the contact. A small smile played across her lips, and she sighed. The spell was broken when she handed him the apple she'd been carrying. 

"Eat on the way," she said.

He looked down at the apple, cool and still in his hands. It may as well have been a brick, or something else inedible, for the amount it excited him, but he didn't have the energy to protest. He took a bite of it, grimacing as the grainy substance spread apart on his tongue and slipped toward the back of his throat. It tasted like dry cardboard. With effort, he swallowed. 

"I'm not hungry, Mere," he said, his voice dull and flat, even to his own ears.

"Eat it anyway," she commanded, staying his hands as he reached for the trashcan in the corner by the door. He pulled back, and they left the on-call room.

He finished the apple as they walked to the scrub room. After the first few bites settled, he began to realize how hungry he was, how starved and deadened he'd been. The yearning need to fill his stomach overwhelmed him, and he stopped walking while he finished the apple off in large, desperate bites. The sharp, sweet taste prodded him awake, and the dim haze that'd clouded everything lifted a little. He was nibbling on the core, trying to get any last little strip of fruit he could before he realized it. When there was nothing left to recover, he stared at the stringy core, somewhat bemused. 

"Thanks," he said. "I guess I was hungry after all." 

She laughed as he tossed the core into a nearby trash bin and they continued on their way. Their pace was slow, leisurely, and she babbled about the difficult c-section she'd done with Addison in the morning. He couldn't help but smile, listening to her go on with such enthusiasm. It was infectious, and for the first time in a while, he felt the bubble of excitement over his own procedure. He would be helping a young boy named Jack overcome his seizures today, giving him a better chance at a normal life. It made him happy despite the gnawing lassitude still pulling at his muscles, his head.

He stopped when they reached the scrub room, his hand hovering just over the handle, fleeting, and he looked at her.

"What?" she said. Her lips quirked in a smile and her eyes twinkled. 

"Nothing," he said. "You're just... you."

She regarded him for a moment. The skin around her eyes crinkled, her lips turned up, and a gorgeous smile brightened her features by several watts. She leaned forward, leaned into him, and wrapped her arms around his waist. He sighed as her grip tightened and she lay her head on his chest. The weariness constricting him lifted just a fraction. 

Orderlies, nurses, and other doctors passed them in the hall, but he didn't care. Didn't care that this might be inappropriate to do in such plain sight. He leaned his head back on the door and sighed, soaking her in, letting her embrace give him a little energy. He was so tired, and he wanted to stand there forever, basking...

But someone knocked on the other side of the door. He bolted forward, startled at the sudden noise. Meredith released him and backed up. When he turned, he saw one of the nurses poking her head through the door. "Dr. Shepherd, the scrub nurse wanted me to tell you that the OR is ready and Jack is already under."

Translation: You're late. Get off your ass and get in here.

He sighed as the throb behind his eyes returned with a vengeance. "All right," he said.

He turned to Meredith, who stood leaning against the far wall, her gaze piercing. "Well, I have to go do this thing," he said.

"I know," she said.

He bumped the door with his back, not taking his eyes from her until he had pulled back into the darkened scrub room and the door had shut her off from him. The entire population of the operating room stood ready and waiting for him, and he felt heat spread across his cheeks. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been this late to one of his own procedures, at least not without another emergency intervening. All the nurses, Dr. Krycek, the resident who had signed up to observe, and the anesthesiologist... All of them stared, and it made him feel a little like a criminal.

He tried not to pay attention to them as he tied on his scrub cap and began methodically washing his hands, scrubbing them until they had a fierce coat of lather. The door slid open and without turning he knew Meredith had followed him into the room. He didn't look up as he continued to scrub off his hands, focusing on the skin just under the tips of his fingernails.

"What is it, Mere?"

"Are you okay to do this surgery?"

He stopped and looked up at her. "Of course I am. Why wouldn't I be?"

"You look awful, Derek."

"Gee, thanks," he said, but his heart wasn't in it. If he looked anywhere near as wiped out and achy as he felt, he couldn't blame her for the assessment. He worked the scrub sponge across his knuckles at a furious pace, until his skin started to complain.

"Can I scrub in?" she asked, finally breaking the silence.

He frowned. "I don't need a babysitter, Meredith."

"It's not to baby-sit you, Derek," she assured him. "I've never done one of these before, and I noticed your intern slot is open."

"Oh." Well, now he felt like an ass. He stared at his hands. They were red and raw.

She must have mistook his frown, because suddenly she was babbling. "It's okay, if you don't want me there. I think Dr. Bailey is doing a bowel resection later that I can catch."

"Brains or bowels." He looked up. "Dr. Grey, are you guilt tripping me?"

She grinned, twirled back and forth in a girlish gesture of faux-innocence that made him melt on his feet. "Would I do that?" she asked.

He grinned back, despite the tiredness creeping under his skin, despite everything, because it was Meredith, and she glowed. "I guess you can scrub in if it'll save you from a bowel resection," he said.

"Oh, thank God," she said. She moved over to the sink he had just abandoned and began to work up a lather under the cascade of cool, clear water. 

He watched her for a long moment. She smiled, but didn't look up.

"But no footsy under the gurney," he commented as backed up into the OR door, leaving her open-mouthed, eyes twinkling, staring for just a moment before she lowered her head and began to scrub harder.

"Good afternoon, everyone. Sorry I'm late," he said. Nobody said a word, and he felt himself flush again. Nobody ever said anything to attendings, but he could see it in their eyes that they knew. They knew he'd overslept. That he'd been irresponsible, let this boy Jack languish under anesthesia longer than was necessary. 

He flexed his hands as one of the nurses fitted gloves over them.

The procedure was long and grueling, and within minutes, the pounding exhaustion from before was a jackhammer on his shoulder blades. Every few minutes he would lean his head back, trying to alleviate the snarling crick in his neck. The magnification glasses he wore rested heavy and thick on the bridge of his nose. He felt like his face was being crushed, and the magnified image began to make him just a little dizzy. Things were blurring in and out. He sighed every few breaths.

He felt the heat of Meredith's stare. She would watch him for a few moments, and then watch the procedure. Like a yo-yo, her attention went back and forth, back and forth. When he happened to look up and catch her eye, he could see the concern, hovering there, and it only made things worse. As Dr. Krycek pounded him with questions about what he was doing, what he recommended for 'xyz' circumstance, how certain methods affected patient recovery, and on, and on, and on, and on, his fingers began to shake, just a little. 

He pulled back and flexed his fingers. Sighed again. Rolled his head around on his neck. Anything to get rid of the spreading discomfort. But nothing worked. "Marie," he asked the scrub nurse on duty. "Would you take off my glasses, please?" 

"Yes, Dr. Shepherd." The nurse nodded and removed them, taking them back to be sterilized. 

He blinked as things shrunk back to their normal size, he could see again, and some of the pain went away. But with the shaded view of the glasses gone, the harsh glare of the overhead lights and lamps started to bother him, just little pricks at first, but another ten minutes into the procedure and he was in pain. Go to bed, go to bed, go to bed. The pulsing weariness returned full throttle.

He blinked against the glare. Dr. Krycek was staring at him with an odd look, and Meredith, Meredith... the weight of her gaze was dragging him down. He sighed, blinked, lifted his hand away from the open skull flap and flexed, flexed, flexed with his hands. This was torture.

"How about some music?" he said as he worked through a particularly difficult cluster of nerve fibers, and Dr. Krycek began to ask more questions that required attentive thought to answer. "Something lively," he added.

Someone suggested a group he'd never heard of before. He shrugged. Anything to distract him. A four-on-the-floor, poppy rhythm flooded the operating room, and for a while, it helped, separating out the minutes into a definitive thump, thump, thump, thump that couldn't be stretched or manipulated no matter how long he thought things were taking. But saturation took its toll eventually, and soon all he heard was a dull roar.

He tried to answer their questions completely, tried to be a good teacher for Dr. Krycek, for Meredith when she actually asked something, though, bless her, she didn't interject much, but by the end of it all, he was hurting, every word spoken was like thunder in his ears, and he just wanted the noise to stop, just wanted to go to bed, just wanted to be alone in the dark. He backed away from Jake, who lay still on the table, and sighed with relief, sucked down a gulping breath of air, trying to cleanse out the weighing exhaustion. "Dr. Krycek, would you like to close?" he asked.

Dr. Krycek nodded enthusiastically and took over, and Derek couldn't evacuate the room fast enough. He was peeling off his gloves, his facemask, gasping in the scrub room, trying not to think about the fact that he still had to drive home. His whole body wanted to collapse right there. 

He glanced at his watch. Six hours. He'd been slow. Really slow. He usually did that surgery in just under five. And he still had to talk to Jake's parents. They'd probably been sitting in the waiting room all this time, biting their nails, worried about their son. The thought of being nice and understanding while he updated them almost killed him on the spot. He didn't want to deal with any more people.

"Derek, are you all right?" Meredith said as she wandered out into the scrub room, pulling her mask off. He looked up and saw Dr. Krycek talking animatedly with the scrub nurse. Jake was being wheeled out through the large double doors, and several people moved about the operating room, starting to pick up the remnants of the surgery such as tossed gloves and aprons. They gathered the used instruments to get them ready for sterilization, started cleaning off the OR table...

He heaved another breath. "Just tired," he said. He hunched over, propping himself up by resting his palms on his bent knees, and just let equilibrium hold him there.

"Derek, why don't you go get dressed. I'll talk to the parents for you."

"Thanks, Mere, but I really should. I'll meet you out by the car, okay?" he said as he straightened himself back out.

She nodded, and the rest of the evening passed in a pained blur. He endured question after question from Jake's parents, who were nice, nice people, but by the time he was through chatting with them, trying to be the McDreamy surgeon everyone had labeled him, he wanted to tear his hair out and run for it. 

If anyone tried to stop him as he rushed through the hallways to the attendings' locker room, he didn't hear them. He changed out of his scrubs, each motion pulling muscles that were damn tired of being pulled, and then he walked blearily to the car. 

Meredith was waiting in the driver's seat, waiting for him. She stared as he climbed into the passenger seat and collapsed. The engine rumbled to life, and she thankfully said nothing as she navigated out of the parking lot. He hung in a woozy, half-conscious, irritated state, irritated that he just couldn't sleep in the car. He wanted his bed. And he spent most of the way home imagining the trillion ways he could drop like a sack of rocks onto the mattress, drop and sleep forever.

"We're here, Derek," Meredith whispered, and her hand was on his shoulder. He snapped out of the haze and stumbled out of the car, up the steps, into the house, up more steps. By the time he'd reached the master bedroom, he was like a drowning man clawing his way toward water.

He didn't even bother with his clothes. He just fell. Fell onto the pillow and the bedspread on his stomach, and lay there, unmoving, wishing the haze of sleep would drag him down, only to be left there numb, not sleeping, and practically in tears from it. God, he was so tired, and sleep hung there, just at the edge of his conscious mind, sticking its tongue out and calling names, taunting him. He closed his eyes. 

As the need to think disappeared, the pounding throb behind his eye sockets and jamming up his sinus cavity growled into prominence. He opened his eyes, stared blearily, unseeing as the fuzz of exhaustion, black and creeping, dotted his vision. He closed them again, glacial and slow, but sleep wouldn't come. He was so, so tired...

He started when she slid over top him, straddled him. Her insignificant weight settled on the dip of his lower back, and she ground against him. But it did nothing to him. Nothing for him.

"I can't, Mere," he sighed. "I just can't right now." The exhaustion had gripped every sinew, every nerve, and strangled them. It sent desperate pleas at him to rest, to recoup the energy he'd leaked over the course of the past few weeks. He shook with the sheer frustration of not being able to just close his eyes and drift away. He didn't even think he could move anymore, not without whatever tenuous hold he had on the control of his limbs breaking into pieces. He lay there, a meek kitten at her mercy, and let the pain seep in.

"Just relax," she whispered. "Let me do this for you."

He groaned, dread flooding him like a marathon runner who'd just finished the last lap, only to discover that the flight of steps to the award platform was worse than the race itself. She didn't understand. This wasn't about him not wanting to perform for her.

This was about him not wanting to perform. At all.

But she surprised him. A sudden warmth flooded through the fabric of his shirt as she laid her hands to rest on his shoulder blades, then pulled back, and ran her hands up underneath the waistline of his shirt, slip, slip, sliding along his skin. He shivered. His breath rattled to a stop. And then she began to rake her palms back and forth, up and down his torso in slow, soothing strokes. The hollow rustle as her skin slid along his own soothed his ears. The release of tension that followed yanked a wretched, torn sob from his throat, and then everything was melting.

"Just relax," she said again. She lifted his shirt up over his head, and he didn't protest. 

She kneaded the tense knots at the juncture of skin over his clavicle, slow and steady. The heat from her touch seeped into his bones and suspended him in a fuzzy, loose state. The house could have been on fire, and he doubted he would have cared.

"Derek," Meredith whispered as he languished there, eyes half-lidded in a dull, unfocused state. "I know that you're scared. And that's okay. But you need to talk about it sometime. This tension is hurting you, Derek. You have to let it go. You have to let the fear go, and that will never happen if you keep doing the internalizing thing."

"Mere," he said, and the beginnings of rigid pain coiled back into his muscles, wrapping, twining, twisting. "I-"

"Shhh," Meredith said. "Not tonight. Tonight, let me do this for you. Let me help." 

She shifted back so that she rested just over his tailbone. And then she ran her hands down the curve of his spine, worked at his lower back, kneading, teasing the skin, and the coil that had reformed loosened and dropped away. The effort to breathe and keep breathing lessened, until he lost all track of time. The room hazed as she pushed the heels of her palms into the small of his back, worked her way up to his shoulders again in an undulating fashion.

The bed creaked as Meredith slid off him, leaving him feeling abandoned. But then her hands were back, pulling his pants down. He didn't resist as she slipped her hands underneath him, undid his zipper, the button, and pulled them off. Her fingertips brushed his tense, rigid calves and ground into them, working out the unyielding blocks of solid pain he hadn't even realized were there. He hadn't thought it possible to melt any further, but he was, melting, melting, melting. When she moved to the backs of his thighs, he shook the relief was so intense, so overwhelming. He groaned, long and low, only to have it hitch off into a shaky sigh.

When Meredith finally stopped, he didn't move, didn't think, didn't care, just lay there in a haze, drunk on the lack of pain. She lay down along his side and her warmth seeped into him. Her breath lapped along the back of his neck, sounded like the rushing of a wave in his ear. And for the first time in weeks, his eyes drooped shut, and he slept without fear.


	13. Chapter 13

**Author's Notes: This site** **has been very tempermental lately. You can also view this story on my livejournal page (linked from my profile) if you're having trouble accessing current parts. Thanks so much for all the feedback and reviews and kind words everyone :) Winding up for the swing here, then back to Mer/Der, I promise!**

* * *

Izzie looked up when Dr. Shepherd shuffled into the elevator. She hoisted her purse onto her shoulder, staring at him with a practiced eye. He just wasn't there. He didn't say hello. He checked to make sure the elevator was going down and stood there like a zombie. His eyes held a dull aura to them. They drooped. And his whole posture was stiff and curled, like he was being crushed under hundreds of feet of water. Exhaustion came off him in waves, waves so thick she felt like she could almost reach out and grab them, drown herself in them. His fingers twined around the strap of his briefcase, so tightly that the leather was squeaking, protesting. And he stood there, the squeak, squeak, squeak of the leather the only indication that he was even alive.

"Dr. Shepherd, are you all right?" she asked.

But the elevator dinged and he shambled out toward the parking lot without answering or acknowledging her, his eyes fixed on one distant point as though it were his salvation. Izzie saw glowing taillights in the distance, lit, waiting, and could only assume Meredith was in the car already. She couldn't remember the last time she'd seen either one of them depart from Seattle Grace individually when their shifts matched up. And today, they'd matched up. She'd watched them leave together in the morning.

She watched, watched until he disappeared and swallowed thick, unyielding dread. That was a train wreck right there. Just waiting to happen. 

Meredith... Meredith wasn't doing any better that she could see. She was being so stupid about things! She'd been keeping that damned empty urn in her locker since the beginning of the week, not talking to Dr. Shepherd, not talking to anyone about it... Izzie had been somewhat miffed that Cristina had apparently been the pallbearer at their little makeshift funeral on the roof. The funeral that she hadn't been invited to. She'd only found out when Meredith had come back to the locker room with the urn and put it in her locker, and only then because Izzie had been getting dressed for her shift at the time and watched Meredith slip the ugly gray jar underneath the pile of her street clothes, burying it from sight. She loved Meredith, she did, but sometimes it was so hard to watch her blatantly favor other friends when Izzie tried so hard to be supportive.

And Meredith? Meredith had been moping around day after day after day. What do I do about Derek? What's wrong with Derek? How do I fix Derek? Have you seen Derek? Derek, Derek, Derek. It seemed to be the main element of every conversation Izzie had had with her lately. Though, that morning before Meredith had scrubbed in with Dr. Montgomery, nothing had come up. But that was the exception. Not the rule. Izzie shook her head. 

She pictured Dr. Shepherd as a pent up Mount Vesuvius, Meredith as Mount Saint Helens. There was no question that the both of them would erupt in a fiery cataclysm nothing short of catastrophic, either Dr. Shepherd from his total inability to deal with Meredith's death, or Meredith from worrying over him. The only question was which one of them would have a meltdown first. Either way, it was going to be downright ugly unless they received an intervention.

And that was when the idea sparked like dry kindling to a lit match. She bounced. Put her hand up to her mouth. Smiled. And then frowned, really frowned. Her innards sank. If she did something like that, Meredith would probably hate her for the rest of eternity. But... how else? She pulled deep within herself, searching, desperate for other inspirations. But nothing came to her. Nothing.

She needed help. Somebody to talk to that wouldn't blab everything to Meredith the first chance he or she got. That ruled Cristina out faster than she could complete the thought that Cristina would be a bad choice. George still wasn't speaking to her, at least with nothing other than snide comments and criticism. He would probably tell Meredith out of spite, even if he agreed with Izzie's plan. Alex... She couldn't talk to Alex. That was just weird. Not when there was so much unresolved... stuff... between them. Not when if she weren't still grieving, he would be her immediate first choice. That would just wind up being... strange. 

And there was no one else. No one else at Seattle Grace she'd connected to on a personal level like that that could help. For a long time, she thought about her options. She wandered over to the waiting area and collapsed into a free chair. She pulled out a bag of chips from her shoulder bag. Munched on them for a while. Pondered as she stared into blurry space.

She couldn't do this on her own, not without somebody else's opinion, someone else to tell her she wasn't being a crazy, judgmental freak. She was far from objective when trying to decide that about herself. And this was big. Huge. Something that could make or break Meredith. Make or break Dr. Shepherd. They were like little fragile Christmas ornaments, perched, wobbling in her hands. All she had to do was flick them with her pinky and they'd drop to the floor and shatter.

Maybe she was going about this wrong. There had to be someone who cared about Dr. Shepherd and Meredith that wasn't necessarily going to blow a whistle on her. Dr. Montgomery wouldn't work. Izzie flat out wasn't going to go there. But, well, there was Mark. Dr. Sloane. Whatever. Dr. Sloane wasn't really in a position to blab much of anything, at least not blab and be believed. Unless he thought saying something would play him up as a hero, maybe score some points, and he was totally the kind of jerk that would do that, too.

Damn.

She waffled. Waffled back and forth.

"Damn it, Izzie," she said to herself. A few people waiting nearby looked up and frowned at her. "Just go do it."

She stood, brushed off the little chip crumbs that had scattered across her lap like remnants of a chip storm, and then she marched back to the elevator. She jammed her thumb on the up button. She waited for the elevator to come back down, watching the floor numbers light up in descending order, each with glacial slowness. Finally the little number one glowed, and the elevator dinged. The doors slid open like gaping jaws. She darted in and let it carry her back up while she paced and paced. She needed to talk, needed to talk to somebody who wouldn't just label her as an interfering wench, at least not someone whose opinion she cared about. 

The elevator dinged when it reached the fourth floor. She plodded out into the hall and wandered, not entirely sure which office was his. She hadn't thought about looking at the directory in the lobby when she'd still been down there. But this was where all the surgical attendings were situated. He had to be around here somewhere. 

She passed Dr. Shepherd's office. The door was shut, and no light spilled from underneath the crack at the base of the door. The same was also true of Dr. Montgomery's office. She found Dr. Burke messing around with some paperwork, but she didn't stop to greet him, and he didn't look up as she walked past.

She skidded to a stop. There it was. Dr. Sloane, Dept. of Plastic Surgery. The shiny gold nametag by the side of the door gleamed under the fluorescent lights in the hallway. 

The door was open, but she was still far enough away that she couldn't see into the space beyond. The sound of his voice carried, mumbling, tumbling through the air toward her in a jumble of large, technical words like dermabrasion and blepharoplasty. He was doing dictations, talking about various ways to prevent or reduce scarring. She found herself lulled by the deep, rumbling tone, and she stood there, letting herself calm down a bit from her earlier frenzy of should she or shouldn't she.

After one final swell of doubt, she landed herself firmly in the should category, and she stepped up to the doorway, squared her shoulders, inhaled... Dr. Sloane faced away from her, his feet propped up on the wall. His chair tilted back at an almost dangerous angle, and he sat, relaxed, one arm propped up behind his head, the other holding a small tape recorder to his lips as he spoke in long, soothing tones.

She glanced around at the small office space. It was semi-disorganized, but at least not choking on papers like Dr. Shepherd's. She'd been hard-pressed not to comment on that the one time she'd needed to find Dr. Shepherd and he'd been there, hidden behind a gargantuan pile of junk. That whole space had made the compulsive cleaner in her shriek with rage. But Dr. Sloane's office, well, that wasn't so bad. 

Apparently, Dr. Sloane and Dr. Shepherd weren't so similar in that respect. And, in that instance, she found it a relief that opposites had attracted, that only one of them made his office into his own personal filing cabinet for life and everything potentially related by even the smallest of random threads. It was a relief because she didn't think her brain could deal with a huge mess right now. Not when it was busy tangling with other worries. She let her eyes wander on in their assessment. 

A tall stack of papers and folders sat on his desk next to his computer. But Dr. Sloane's shelves were mostly decorated with pictures, not further papers or books or journals. He had a silver-framed photograph of Dr. Montgomery featured prominently on the shelf closest to the desk. Indelibly, Dr. Montgomery smiled. Her hair had been twisted up in a fabulous half-French twist, red locks spilling out of the top in a swath of curls. She looked like she'd just walked off a New York runway or something. Nothing but chic. Izzie found herself almost envious.

A picture of Dr. Sloane and Dr. Shepherd sat next to that in a dinged up, older frame. Dr. Sloane and Dr. Shepherd sat at a table covered in white cloth. Fancy china dishes spilling over with delicious-looking food were spread out in front of them. A crowd of other people, mostly fabulous women done up much like Dr. Montgomery in the first picture, stood crunching in around them and behind them, trying to fit in the picture, smiling, raising glasses. It appeared to be at some large social gathering. But the photograph was obviously focused on the two of them, Dr. Shepherd and Dr. Sloane, much younger, less creased with time, more carefree. Dr. Shepherd had his hand raised as if he were taking a swipe at Dr. Sloane, and Dr. Sloane, grinning like a fool, had the beginnings of a dodge hunkering down his posture. The moment, frozen for all time by the photograph, sat there on Dr. Sloane's shelf. 

"Med school graduation party," Dr. Sloane said. "Those are all of Derek's sisters, his mother, and a few other friends of ours."

Izzie skittered back a step at Dr. Sloane's sudden interjection. She hadn't realized Dr. Sloane had stopped his dictations or had even noticed her standing there at his door with her hand poised ready to knock. "They're all very pretty," she said, her voice choking on the last syllable as her heart started to calm down and stop palpitating. "You still keep in touch with all of them?"

"Yes," he said. He whirled his chair around to face her. "They're a little further removed from this whole mess. I guess it's harder for them to keep hating me, me being the charming guy that I am." He fidgeted a little in his seat. He put his tape recorder down on the desk with a thunk and clasped his hands in front of him. He leaned back in his chair.

"Oh," she replied. She didn't really know what to say to that, and suddenly she felt like she had been yanked into a thick, oozing pile of awkward and stood there, gasping, choking as it spilled into her and drowned her. The air ducts thumped in the tense silence. Thump. Thunk. Thump. Thunk. 

"So, Dr. Stevens," Dr. Sloane said, breaking the thick, ugly quiet. "What can I do for you?"

She sighed, finally entering the office instead of hovering like a fly at the door. She collapsed in the seat across the desk from Dr. Sloane, spilling out into a worried, un-ladylike slouch. She paused. Tapped her fingers on his desk. Shifted back and forth. Just rip the band-aid off, she thought.

And so she began without preamble. "If you had two friends who were deeply in denial, and you knew a way to sort of force them into a conversation... a painful conversation, but a conversation nonetheless... Would you do it? Even if it might hurt them in the short term?"

Rip, tear, twist, toss. The virtual band-aid landed with a thud in the virtual trashcan. She swallowed. At least there was no turning back now.

Dr. Sloane frowned and regarded her for a long, long second. His gaze twitched up to the photos, and then back to her. His eyes narrowed. "Look," he said with a long-suffering sigh that made his whole body wilt. "If this is about why I slept with Addison instead of trying to help her fix her marriage... I really just don't think that's any of your business."

Izzie paused, breath caught in her throat, and a blush flourished across her skin. Heat swept down her neck. She coughed and recovered. "No. No, this is about Meredith and Dr. Shepherd. Not Dr. Montgomery. I need an objective third party who isn't going to tell me my plan is stupid without even listening to it."

"Addi didn't sic you on me to try and screw with our bet?"

"No..." Izzie said. She leaned forward. "What bet?"

Dr. Sloane frowned again, ignoring her question. "I'm not really objective about Derek," he said. Paused. Breathed. "And I don't think I'm really objective about Meredith either. She's my favorite dirty mistress, you know."

"But, you've already tried to get Dr. Shepherd to talk," Izzie protested. "You know something is wrong. Something you think needs fixing."

"Not that it did any good," Dr. Sloane said.

"Did you see him today?" Izzie asked. "He's like the walking dead."

Dr. Sloane shrugged. "He's tired. He's worried about losing Meredith. And he's the king of repressing. He'll stumble around like that until somebody gets him to talk or until he snaps. I tried for the former. But he passed out before I really got anywhere."

"So you are. You are worried," Izzie said.

"Yes," he said.

"When has this happened before? You say it like you know, like you're not speculating."

"I don't know if he would appreciate me spilling his life's details to you."

The inner gossipmonger in her wailed at the unfairness of it all, the injustice, but she forced herself to nod. "Fair enough," she said. "But I think I have an idea..."

"Always a scary prospect coming from a woman..."

"I'll pretend you didn't say that."

"Whatever lets you sleep at night..."

She stood up and began to pace as she explained what she wanted to do. After she finished, he merely stared at her. Stared for a long, painful moment, eyes boring into her, piercing, making her blush under the scrutiny. "I could do it," he said. "Derek already hates me. And I like Meredith, but she's not my friend."

Izzie shook her head, surprised that he would even offer. "No. No, I'll do it. After the dust settles, they'd wonder how you got into her locker anyway. I already know the combination. But do you think it would work? Get them to talk? If it's just going to blow up in my face, I don't want to do it."

He sat and thought about it for a long moment, long enough that doubts began to curl up around her throat and squeeze, and squeeze, and squeeze. She breathed, trying to relax. 

"Yes," he said after some consideration. "I think it would work. But it will take a while for them to figure out you've actually helped them."

She nodded as a deep calm settled into her gut, her mind made up by his support. "I'll do it tomorrow then. I just don't... I don't have the energy tonight to try and stage something."

"Okay," he said. He picked up his recorder.

"Thank you, Dr. Sloane." She gathered up her purse and turned toward the door.

"Mark," he replied.

"Only if I'm Izzie," she said.

They grinned at each other. She walked out of his office. His soothing, lulling, deep voice resumed. And that was that.


	14. Chapter 14

Meredith sat with Derek in the cafeteria while he picked at his salad. In the morning, he'd woken up and smiled a beautiful smile at her. A smile that reached up around his eyes, crinkling the skin. It had been a smile that said he'd finally slept, finally managed to get through a night without a nightmare. But even then, even after that, there'd been a ghost haunting his gaze, a strange, alien thing that made him look so haggard, so displaced from the world. 

One good night of sleep wasn't going to fix this, and she knew it. His entire posture said it. The way he ate said it. He took small bites of his food, picked at the lettuce with the tines of his plastic fork. Every swallow looked like a feat fit for a gladiator. There was no pleasure in his eyes as he popped a cherry tomato into his mouth and chewed slowly. And tomatoes were the best part of the salad. He'd always saved the tomatoes for last before, but now they were just another obstacle on the way to an empty plate.

Meredith sighed. She'd been trying so hard since her discussion with Dr. Prahbu. She'd gone to him after Cristina had suggested it. The talk had been helpful, and she had been comforted to find out that in a lot of instances, the best solution really was just giving it time. Derek's reaction wasn't even considered post-traumatic stress disorder yet. What Derek had was acute traumatic stress. Acute. As warped as it seemed, it comforted her. Because acute was so much less scary to her than something that often ended up chronic. Acute was something you could work at, something that didn't keep dogging its way back into the picture, something you could whittle away and it wouldn't come back, because acute meant there was a definitive length to it, an end. Acute headache, give pain medication, it goes away. Acute fever, apply ice, it goes down.

She'd attacked the problem with that in mind, and it seemed so much less overwhelming to think of things in small steps. Small improvements. Small things she could do to help him begin coping normally.

And she had made progress. Some. With the apple. The actually sleeping thing. But two little steps of progress weren't necessarily the first in a long line of victories, and she didn't want to get overconfident.

Things were not okay yet.

Okay was a freakin' island in the Bahamas compared to this. And she ached, utterly ached for him. If she had been able to pull her life back through time, to rewind, reshape, she would have. If she could have traded with him, let him be the one to give up for a second, and her be the one to suffer afterward, she would have, she would have gladly traded. If she could have just made herself swim, made herself believe in the happy ending when she'd actually had one... Well, it was all a fantasy now. 

Every time she looked at him, the pain confirmed to her how much she loved him. And at that very moment, love sucked. It crushed her, clawed her, pounded on her shoulders, made every waking thought an instrument of torture. She loved him, and just watching him, watching him eat like he'd lost all pleasure from his life, like he was just existing... It was a rack for her to hang from.

Derek's gaze shifted to something past her shoulder. His eyes narrowed, halting her thoughts. She started to turn to see what the big deal was, but a rush of motion out of the corner of her eye made her flinch away. The whole table shook as someone slammed an object down in front of them. Meredith blinked, surprised, and then took the sight in. Her mother's ugly gray urn sat there, right in the middle of the table, a foot from Derek's half-eaten salad. 

She looked up. Izzie stood there, panting, a sprawling red blush across her face, her light blue scrubs and light pink undershirt totally incongruous with the fiery blaze in her expression. The whole cafeteria grew deathly silent. Meredith found herself not moving, frozen, and Derek sat there, his fork paused mid-fish for a lettuce piece.

"You two need to talk," Izzie said. "And you suck at it, so I'm helping."

She pointed at the urn and looked at Derek. "Dr. Shepherd, Meredith hid this from you, probably because she's so worried about you she doesn't want you to worry about her problems. But Meredith is a person. She deserves some consideration. She deserves to have her boyfriend there when she spreads her mother's ashes on the roof. Because Meredith is a very annoying person to be around when she mopes. And you're making her mope. Yes, she died. But you need to deal with it. She's back. You're getting a second chance, a second chance that some people would kill for, and you're screwing it up."

Then she turned and looked at Meredith, folded her arms over her chest and continued, "So talk already. Deal. Have lots more noisy, gross, naked sex. Whatever you have to do. But fix it."

Silence spread out around them in a noxious, wafting cloud.

Izzie stared at them, silent for a few moments more as her words sank in, and then she turned and walked away, steady, sure of herself, like she was positive what she was doing was so, so right, and couldn't possibly be found fallible in any way. For several moments, Meredith was too stunned to think, too stunned to do more than watch Izzie depart. 

A pin could have dropped and everyone in the room would have heard it. The severity of what had just happened registered as though someone had stuck a note on a pike and jammed it through her ear. Meredith felt her stomach dropping into her shoes, and a sickening coil of dread took its place. Derek stared at her, his face an utter mask. "Meredith," he said. "What..."

She took one look at the crowd of gossipmongers in the room, nurses, doctors, other interns, orderlies, custodial workers, all over the place, all of them listening but pretending not to be. A well of rage boiled in her heart, snarling, straining to get out, to pour out of her with words. She stared at the direction Izzie had darted off, finally able to think again, but Izzie was already gone, and the door that had been her exit strategy swung shut with a thud, leaving Meredith behind to deal with the mess. How... How could Izzie... When... What! Words abandoned her entirely.

She stood, her chair shrieking backward along the floor like a banshee, and grabbed the urn so tightly she thought she might break it, but she was beyond caring about stupid little details like that. With her other hand she clutched Derek's wrist, yanked on him. "Not here," she hissed. He dropped his fork and stumbled up from his chair just in time for her to drag him along as she stalked out of the cafeteria.

They passed through the halls, and everyone parted like the red sea before them as if they could sense her dripping fury. She pulled him into the on-call room and locked the door behind them, jerking the lock so harshly it protested at first.

Derek stared. His eyes darted to the ugly gray bundle still clutched between her white knuckles. Meredith stood there panting, trying to calm down, trying so hard but failing. Derek didn't need to deal with this right now. She didn't need to deal with this right now. She'd been okay, waiting for the right time to talk. Really, she had been. And this, this thing Izzie had done, this stupid urn that Meredith had stupidly hidden, they had conspired together, taken all her careful plans about small steps and torched them in an angry blaze. She'd been making progress, just a little, but she had been! She was going to flay Izzie alive when she got her hands on- Why had she done this! Even better, why had she done this at work in front of a hundred people?

But when she looked at Derek, she kind of had her answer. They'd fled to the on-call room to get away from the stares, the whispers. But now they were stuck, chained here, locked in this little room. And talking was going to happen, whether they were ready for it or not. The crowd had forced them into it, corralled them. There was no crowd at home. And they could have easily just done the denial thing like always. But not now. And even if they somehow didn't talk, everyone in the hospital would be whispering, whispering, whispering, and it would be impossible to ignore for long. It was rather ingenious, using the hospital's gossip network as a weapon. Ingenious and infuriating and nosey and unforgivable and, quite possibly, catastrophically damaging. She gritted her teeth.

"When did you..." Derek said, awkward, crumbling. His voice petered off and he never finished the question.

She closed her eyes, leaned back against the wall, breathed in, breathed out as she hugged the little urn. She could do calm. She could. Caaaalm. "Earlier this week," she finally said, her voice icy. She expected the yelling to start soon. He was Derek. He yelled. Their fights were always shouty, when they managed to talk enough to have them, but what she got instead broke her heart even more.

"You didn't trust me?" he asked. He sat down on the closest bed, which squeaked under his weight. But he didn't yell. Didn't particularly inflect much of anything.

"It has nothing to do with trust, Derek," she said. "It's about me thinking you might already have enough angst on your plate." The fight still hovered there, back in the corner of her mind, waiting to be let out if he changed his mind, but he remained this strange, beaten-down Derek, one that wasn't yelling or passionate. It scared her more deeply than any shouting ever could, and she felt her chest begin to pound with it, that quaking, strange fear.

"But you didn't even tell me," he protested. "Didn't let me decide."

"Look who's talking, Derek," she said, unable to stop herself from snapping, just that once. She sat down next to him on the bed and set the urn on the small, fluffy pillow. She leaned against him. He didn't protest, at least. "You can't sleep. You barely eat. I know it's because of me, but only because I'm not blind."

"That's not fair," he whispered.

She shrugged. "When is anything about us ever fair?"

"I would have been there for you, Meredith. When did you get her ashes? I would have... Are you... Are you okay? I thought you were okay. With your mother dying. You said..." His voice trailed away and for one precious moment, she read everything, all of his thoughts, stuck up there on his face like books on a dime store rack for her to pick and choose from. Why had he believed her? How could he have been so stupid? And why hadn't he been there? Yet another failure. Why, why, why.

"I'm fine, Derek," she said, wanting so badly to reassure him, and yet at the same time so overwhelmed with anger, frustration, and other things that she couldn't bring herself to stick with the mask. "Mostly. Okay, I'm not completely okay. But it's done. She's dead. She's dead, Derek, but you're sitting there still alive but dying by degrees, and I can't do much to help you if you won't talk. Don't make this about my mother when you're still here, still breathing. You're more important."

He looked at her like she'd sucker-punched him. He blinked. Frowned. Surrendered his face to his hands for a moment. Sighed. Looked back up at her. "I am not more important than you and your feelings, Meredith. I'm not. You could have... you could have talked. To me."

She shook, shook as sudden tension gripped her. She wanted to reach out and throttle him, to yell at him, to moan and scream and whine and ask why he was so utterly fucking dense. A sudden, lancing headache settled behind her eyes as she yanked it all inside and settled for a bitter snap, "That's a load of crap coming from you, Derek, and you know it."

"God, I'm just so tired," he replied. And he wilted. He dropped his face into his hands, propped his elbows on his knees, and sighed so heavily his entire torso ratcheted into an arc and then flat again with the effort of it.

"Why, Derek?" she asked, her fury gushing out of her like blood from a jagged, ugly wound, disappearing. She put her hand on his back, just to feel him there, to assure herself that they somehow weren't fighting, somehow weren't yelling about all of this like she had envisioned only moments ago. The warmth of his skin seeped through the back of his scrubs, and she let her palm soak it in. The throb in her head slowly leaked away. "Just talk to me. Please. You need it."

He laughed, a bitter, wretched sound like breaking glass. "I need it?"

"Yes!" she said. Her tongue pulled back in her mouth, and the back of her throat was agony as she tried not to start crying. She swallowed. "Do you think this is fun for me? Watching you torture yourself? Just let it out! Put it out on the table so we can look at this mess for what it is and maybe start cleaning it up."

"You think..." he began, but his voice fell away into silence, as though he'd lost his thoughts. He sighed again, and under her palm she felt him start to tremble. "You think that's all this is? A mess?" he asked. 

"I don't know what it is, Derek," she said. "Because you won't tell me-"

He cut her off. "It's a fucking landfill, Meredith. I can't... I can't close my eyes," he said, his words tapering off into a tortured, wispy sob that made her want to fall apart right along with him.

"Talk to me!" she prodded. They stood there, together, together on the edge of the cliff, hands intertwined. Finally, he was peeling open, inch by slow inch at a time, and she wanted to jump and shout and cry all at once, but she settled for breathing in, breathing out, breathing in, breathing out, trying to stay calm while he found his voice, anything to not spook him out of it. She forced her anxiety away, stuffed it in the back of her thoughts like a forgotten leftover in the fridge, left behind to grow moldy and never be consumed.

He shook his head, back and forth, back and forth like some wounded animal getting ready to bolt. His eyes squeezed shut. And he started to pant, hyperventilate. She rubbed his back. Whispered shushing noises to him, tried to keep him calm enough to talk. Anything to get the words out. He just needed to get the words out, she thought, frantic. 

The very first thing Dr. Prahbu had suggested when she'd gone to him and asked for tips was to get the victim to start the sharing process. Because once an event was shared, it started to lose some of its power to terrorize individually, started to become an element of a controlled environment that the victim could pick apart and analyze, safe, and warm, and knowingly away from harm. If Derek would only just...

"Every time I close my eyes I see you," he said, his voice dropping off into an abyss of silence. His lower lip began to quiver. He leaned forward, clenched his knees with his fingers with such ferocity that his hands shook and his knuckles leaked their fleshy tone. "Lying there... Dead. And I just..." The panting resumed. His muscles tensed in a rigid lock of sinew and flesh.

She touched his arm, gave him contact, leaned into him with her voice. "You just..." she prodded. Talk, talk, talk, talk, she sent through her stare, glared the words at him, as if it would help, as if it would beam the compulsion into his brain. She thought so hard that the stream of words became a roar, a pounding roar. 

For a moment, time stretched to a torturous eon. Everything seemed to pause. Derek's grief hitched up into a sigh, and for that moment, that one elongated moment, he almost looked like he'd recollected himself, decided that talking wasn't going to work, that he wanted to bottle everything up some more. And then time constricted. He fell to pieces and began to rock, back and forth. 

"I feel so powerless," he said between sucking, gasping, heaving sobs. "I get... I get why you did... what you did. I do. But... I keep... The way your hair floated... in the water... And I couldn't... God." He panted. Ran his hands through his hair in a worried, repetitive motion. "I just want... to be able to close my eyes again and not worry about the seconds I'm not there. I just want..."

She swallowed thickly against the pain, his pain, her pain. "You just want..." she said, taking his hand and squeezing it, trying to remind him that she was there, listening, that he wasn't alone, even as she sat there shaking, trying to figure out how to deal with the deluge herself. 

His Adam's apple rolled down his throat as he swallowed, gasped, soaked his face in tears. "To not be reminded... of the one second I wasn't there... and never ever could be..."

She wrapped her arms around him and hugged him so tightly he grunted and her arms ached with the effort. He stared off into space, eyes red, skin puffy and blemished, face streaked with tears. He blinked and more tears spilled over. 

"I'm just so tired," he said. He reached up with a shaky grasp and hooked his hands around her arms, began to rub the skin back and forth with the warm pads of his thumbs.

"I know," she whispered, and she started to cry right along with him. She released her grip and reached her palm up to his ear. She swept his head down onto her lap. He didn't protest, gratefully collapsed with her encouragement, lay there in a semi-fetal position. He gripped her other arm like a security blanket while she ran her fingers through his hair with the free one. "I know." She sniffled. "We'll work through this."

"Help me..."

The words nearly broke her. Broke her into little pieces of herself. A fresh well of tears stabbed the backs of her eyes and she wanted to break right along with him.

"I will, Derek," she said. "I'm here. I'm okay. I'm alive. We can deal with this. We just need-"

Derek's beeper went off. She pumped her fists at the air. "God damn it," she yelled, the words raking her throat with their guttural harshness, and her esophagus was suddenly a wasteland of sore and torn. 

He groaned as he sat up. Then he pulled the beeper off his belt, looked at it, sniffling, wiping his face with his hands, blinking. "I have to take this," he said, his voice dull and rough and bleached of life. "It's a 911 page from OR 7."

"You can't, Derek. You can't go," she said, shocked that he would even consider it when just moments ago he'd been curled in her arms, his grief flooding out of him in a torrent. "You're a wreck. I'm a wreck. There's wreckage here."

He stood, swallowed, swallowed again as he raised his fist to his mouth and squeezed his eyes shut. He stumbled, only to catch himself on the wall. He panted, took in deep, cleansing breaths. 

"I'll manage," he said, even as he stood there shaking. He brushed the back of his palm across his cheeks, smearing the wet mess of tears away, only to have more leak out. He grunted, coughed, a curdled little sound came from his throat, and he wiped the new tears away.

"Derek..."

"No," he said. He collected himself, swallowed several more times. He breathed in and out, and before her eyes, he slowly transformed himself into the cold mask he'd been walking around with for the past few weeks, the cold, tired, deadened mask. The only remnants of their talk were his eyes, which were swollen and red with pain that wouldn't just go away with carefully practiced breathing, no matter how good he was at hiding things away in a box. 

"Just let me do this, Meredith," he said, his voice flat and dull and dangerous. He flexed his hands, his scalpel hand in particular. "I need to do something right now. I need to..."

Not feel powerless. The words were left unspoken, but she heard them nonetheless. 

"You're not God, Derek," she said, the words bitter. She sniffled and wiped at her own eyes. 

He crumpled just a little. "I still need to do this," he said.

And then he left.


	15. Chapter 15

OR 7 was a frenzy. A redheaded, freckled surgeon he didn't recognize stood there at the table, looking lost behind his surgical mask while everyone ran around his island of inactivity this way and that like a swarm of ants. A patient, a young woman, lay on the operating table, but the anesthesiologist wasn't monitoring anything, wasn't even in the room yet. The woman ticked back and forth and then went still again. Derek scrubbed his hands off quickly and darted into the room. "Talk to me," he said as a nurse put gloves on his hands.

The surgeon looked up, and Derek frowned. His face was so, so young, unblemished with time, pale as a sheet, not including the freckles, and his eyes dripped with unexpressed fears. He couldn't have been more than a first or second year resident. Why was he in here alone?

The surgeon swallowed. "Patient... uh... patient showed a marked decrease in consciousness level along with difficulty breathing just before we were going to put her under," he explained. And then he added, "We haven't even done anything yet." He sounded amazed, absolutely amazed that something could go wrong before the procedure even began. Absolutely amazed and absolutely terrified. The young man's hands shook.

"Why is she in the OR?" Derek asked, trying to remain calm as he looked the woman over. She was probably 25, maybe 30 years old. She was thin, almost waiflike. And she was covered with small abrasions, other lacerations, bruising... Her breaths came in short, small gasps, and her eyes were open, but she looked like she was in some sort of stupor. He snapped his fingers in front of her face, and there was no reaction whatsoever, no blink, no eye adjustment. "Can you hear me?" he asked. She didn't reply.

"Repair for an intertrochanteric fracture. Car accident. Drove herself right into a wall," nervous surgeon answered.

Derek stopped and looked at the man. "She was in a head on collision?" 

"Yes."

"Where are her CT scans?" Derek asked. 

A nurse nudged him and suddenly there were a few sets of films in his hands. "Here, Dr. Shepherd," the nurse said.

He raised the first scan to the light. His breath stopped, just for a moment. He quickly flipped through the others. All of them showed the same thing, which made the situation more confounding. He tossed the films to the side. 

"Why the hell wasn't I paged sooner?" he snapped. "This is an epidural hematoma. Get me the drill. Someone shave this spot and sterilize it, right here."

Nervous surgeon babbled, "Dementia is common in conjunction with hip fractures, sir... The CT scan looked clean."

"And whose opinion was that? Yours?" Derek asked. The woman on the table began to gasp more frantically. Derek couldn't believe that the woman had presented with dementia before she'd even been wheeled into the operating room and nobody had paged him or any of his senior residents. Confusion like that was a huge, blaring red stop sign that screamed head injury.

"Where's the drill!" he snapped as one of the nurses finished shaving the spot he'd pointed to and wiped it off with disinfectant. 

"But... It looked fine..." nervous surgeon answered. His gaze darted to the floor like a scolded puppy.

"Did anyone on my staff tell you it looked fine? Anyone?" Derek asked. Because he hoped not. Anyone he'd trained would know what had been on that CT scan. They would know. When the CT scan had been taken, the bleed had been just a blip, barely noticeable. But no one on his staff should have or would have missed it. Rage boiled. "What's the patient's name?"

"Julie Walters," one of the nurses interjected. "Drill is almost ready, Dr. Shepherd."

Derek put his hand on Julie's cheek, stroked it. "Okay, come on, Julie. Work with me here. You can do it. Just keep breathing," he said. Julie's eyes slipped shut and her gasping slowed to something dangerously irregular. 

A nurse brought him the drill and he went to work. He drew a scalpel over the spot that had been shaved, cutting down to the skull, and stood waiting, ready. The nurse swapped the scalpel for the drill. He bent down and put a burr hole through the slit he'd cut in the scalp with a quick downward push on the drill. Blood spurted from the wound the minute he broke through, and he put the drill aside on the instrument tray. "Suction here, please," he said. 

But the heart monitor shrieked out. Derek whipped his gaze up and saw the flatline as the sound stabbed at his ears.

"Asystole!" a nurse shouted.

"No..." nervous surgeon mumbled. "No, she can't..."

And then things started to blur. Derek tried to get the wound clear of blood, kept working on relieving the pressure on the woman's brain, all while he yelled at the nurses and nervous surgeon, coaching them through trying to get her heart going again. His own heart pounded. This woman couldn't die. She wouldn't die while he was there. This was an easy fix. He could have fixed this if only he'd been here sooner...

After the fourth round of epinephrine, Derek stopped, finally stopped. Sucked in a breath, swallowed. Everyone stared at him. The heart monitor continued to wail in a long, continuous, piercing shriek. "Time of death... 1:42 PM," he said after glancing at the clock on the wall. 

He turned to nervous surgeon as a nurse reached up and switched off the monitor. "Who are you?" Derek asked.

"Neil Wyatt, sir." 

"Second year resident? Third year?" 

"Second, sir."

"Dr. Wyatt, why wasn't your senior resident paged before you attempted this procedure?" Derek asked. Dr. Torres or someone even higher on the food chain should have been paged the moment this victim had been wheeled in. A head on collision in a car crash resulting in a patient presenting with dementia and a severe hip fracture... and she hadn't been paged? This never would have slipped through the cracks if a senior resident had been paged.

"I thought I could--"

"Oh, you thought you could be a jock and fix this by yourself," Derek snapped.

"I thought..."

"If you had paged me even thirty minutes earlier this girl would have been fine. If you had asked for a neural consult at all, she would have been fine. You get that, right?"

"I..."

"This woman was in a car accident, the world mascot for head traumas. Why didn't you get a neural consult?"

"I ordered the CT!"

"A CT apparently doesn't do much in the hands of an orthopedic surgeon, does it?" Derek said.

Derek stared at Dr. Wyatt, watched as the younger doctor's lower lip started to quiver and his eyes started to water and spill over, and something inside Derek snapped, just snapped. He grabbed an instrument tray and sent it careening across the room. Surgical instruments scattered across the floor, some spinning, some shattering, some landing with dull thunks. The room went utterly silent as all of the nurses stopped moving, stopped trying to clean up. 

"You killed this woman, Dr. Wyatt. Do you get that you fucking killed her?" he shouted. He overturned a cart, sent it slamming to the floor. It crashed down, the rumble roar of it surrendering to gravity overwhelming every other sound in the room. Everyone watched him, eyes wide, stunned. The nurse closest to the swing door darted out. Her feet tap, tap, tapped along the floor tiles as she ran away. 

But he didn't care. Everything was in a red wash of rage. He couldn't see straight. Couldn't breathe save for the gasping, sucking torture his lungs wrought on him. The world fuzzed and hazed as he looked back at the woman, lying quiet and still and dead on the exam table, a bloody, seeping hole in her skull. She was pale, and dead, and dead, and dead. And worse, it was a stupid death. A stupid death that would have been averted had somebody, anyone with half a thought process intact, looked at that goddamned CT. That goddamned CT that had been taken well before Julie had been in mortal danger. If someone... would have just... intervened. Oh, God.

Everything he'd screwed back up inside himself when he'd left Meredith in the on-call room came bubbling back to the surface. Everything. The world blurred, blurred across his whole field of view and Meredith was in the water again. Again, she was in the water. Floating, drifting, her skin blue and lifeless. Meredith, Meredith, please, he heard himself sobbing as he tried to push life back into her. She's alive. She's alive. She's alive. She's all I have. She's alive. And then he was back in the operating room. 

Pressure built, built, built in his muscles, until they were loaded springs, ready to snap. Derek launched himself at Dr. Wyatt, who stood there, eyes wide, panting as if he were having some sort of nervous breakdown. He slammed the younger doctor up against the wall. "You could have saved her," Derek yelled, got right up in the bastard's face and yelled, spat, hissed. "You could have saved her, but you didn't. And you know why?"

Dr. Wyatt gasped. Shook his head in tiny, barely there motions, like he was trembling more than shaking his head no. Little, wretched, terrified sobbing noises dribbled from his throat. 

Derek fisted the man's scrubs, closed his fingers over them so hard it began to hurt. "Because you're walking around with blinders on. The signs were there, and you just. Fucking. Ignored them! Who made you a doctor?" He stood there panting, clenching his fists, clenching them harder. He breathed so hard he thought he might hyperventilate, but he couldn't stop. Couldn't stop. He melted off Dr. Wyatt, stumbled a step back, but the younger doctor stayed plastered to the wall as if Derek were still holding him there, pushing him flat like a mechanical press. 

The bright lights of the operating room stabbed at him. Derek sucked in a breath, sucked in another, gasping, gasping. His eyes leaked over, and everyone was watching, everyone was watching, and he just. Couldn't. Stop.

The doors to the operating room swung open with a swish, swish sound. A voice pierced the silence. "Dr. Shepherd!"

Derek let his gaze tick over, but he couldn't see, couldn't see in the blur. Two blobs stood there. A pink one. Probably the nurse who had fled from the OR earlier when he'd started throwing things. And a more imposing one in white. He recognized the voice, and it just started everything over again. 

Panic plowed into him, overwhelming, sudden, crushing. Like an avalanche, it bowled him over. He was falling apart, falling apart in front of everyone, and he couldn't pick up the pieces, couldn't even begin to try to pick up the pieces. Everyone was watching. He'd just body slammed a fellow doctor. He'd destroyed hospital property. Probably just lost his job. And he couldn't stop, couldn't stop the rage and frustration and panic and pain, all constricting around his heart with a clenching, agonizing squeeze. 

He panted. He couldn't breathe. Someone had jammed his chest into a vice and was tightening it screw by tormenting screw. He couldn't... He clutched at his chest. Tried to suck in some air. Anything. The world tilted and the lights went out. Sound blotted into a dull, distant hum.

Then he was on the floor, staring up at the bright, stabbing lights, a dozen blurry, masked faces looking down at him, and noise shrieked back to its regular pitch. Had he fallen? The blurry, imposing figure in white hovered over him, closer than the others, the spectators. Derek gasped and choked as his heart thundered and thudded in his chest, palpitating so harshly he thought it was going to skitter up through his neck and out his nose. A hand was on his throat over his jugular. He reached up and clutched at it, pawed at it, but his fingers weren't working, weren't functioning right.

"Dr. Shepherd, breathe," Chief Webber's deep, soothing voice said. "You need to breathe. Take deep breaths. Come on, now, focus."

Derek blinked and let the world fall away for a moment, let it fall back behind him as he came to grips with his situation. When he opened his eyes again slowly, things came back into sharp relief, leaving him numb and cold and just lying there, blinking, breathing. Tears continued to leak from his stinging eyes. Every time he blinked, they leaked. But the frenzy had gone out of him, dissolved, left him abandoned on his back on the floor. He could see, and the world made some amount of sense again, but numbness bit into him, straight to the marrow of his bones, and he lay there, not moving except for the tremors racing up and down his frame. He might as well have been a pile of gelatin with eyes.

"Dr. Shepherd, you had a panic attack. Just keep breathing," Chief Webber said. "You're fine. Back up, people. This isn't a circus." The dozen sets of eyes that hovered, all staring, watching, backed away. "Marie, why don't you get a stretcher?"

"No," Derek mumbled, his voice ugly and cracking and lost. "No, I can walk."

He tried to sit up. His abdominal muscles wailed at him, and the Chief's hands were suddenly on his back, trying to steady him. Everything fuzzed out on him. He gasped, blinked. 

"Dizzy?" the Chief asked.

Derek pulled his legs in and sat Indian-style, bending forward while he clutched his face with his hands. Anything to stop the spinning. "Yes," he said. 

"Anyone have a candy bar?" Chief Webber asked. And then he was suddenly stuffing a warm, wrapped dark chocolate Milkyway into Derek's hands. Just looking at it made Derek feel sick. 

"Eat it," the Chief said. "I suspect you have low blood sugar."

Derek tried to pick at the wrapper, but his hands shook. His fingers slipped along the smooth wrapper as though it were a block of ice. He couldn't manage it, just couldn't. 

He crumbled a little more when the Chief took the Milkyway away and opened it for him. Chief Webber handed him back the chocolate bar, and Derek took it in his shaking grasp, raised it to his lips as his boss stared at him, stared Derek down into submission. One bite of the candy and he felt like he was choking. Caramel stuck to the back of his throat. His eyes burned and his stomach roiled at the prospect of consuming anything more. "I can't. I can't," Derek whispered, shoving the bar away. He'd tried. He had.

"Just keep working at it. Can you stand now?"

Hands supported him, cutting up under his armpits. He stumbled, sort of drunk-like, to his feet, wobbled there a moment, gasped as a new flood of blackness took his vision away just for a moment. 

Sight came back. Everyone in the operating room stared. He felt their gazes burning, stabbing, peeling him apart as though he were layered like an onion, and on top of everything else, the numbness, the tears, the shaky, dizzy, spinny feeling, a hot, red blush spread across his face, his neck, everywhere like an out of control wildfire. He dropped his gaze to the floor. Shattered bits of things lay sprawled in a chaotic non-pattern.

Chief Webber guided him out of the OR. They walked slowly. The Chief didn't complain, and that was fine with Derek, because he didn't think he could manage anything else but the little shuffle step he was working on. They ended up in the small break room just down the hall. 

It had a vending machine, a long couch, a few other chairs, and a coffee table covered with out-of-date magazines. Derek collapsed onto the couch and folded over with a sigh. He dropped the unfinished candy bar on the coffee table, where it landed with a thud on top of July's issue of Vanity Fair. 

He sighed again. The snack machine buzzed and growled. His head started to hurt, beginning with a dull, pulsing throb. "Can you turn that off?" Derek asked, pointing with a quivering index finger.

The Chief nodded, shuffled over to the offending snack machine, and pulled the plug.

Blessed silence.

Derek's whole body felt like it was going to shake right out of his skin. He couldn't stop the tremors, couldn't make himself focus, or breathe normally, or anything really. He drew his hands back through his hair, surprised to find it soaked with what could only be sweat, and then pulled his fists back in front of him so he could watch them tremble. His cheeks felt damp as his eyes continued to leak. He blinked, spilling more over in a stinging, hot deluge that he just couldn't stop. Every piece of his body felt like it was staging a bitter rebellion, and every thing he did had to be done with careful, calm requests, most of which were denied anyway. There was nothing he could do about it. Stop it, he said to himself. Stop crying. Stop shaking. Stop acting like a fucking victim. But his body continued to betray.

"Marie?" Chief Webber said, and only then did Derek realize the hands that'd been holding him, supporting him while he'd made his walk of shame belonged to the scrub nurse, not the Chief. Further embarrassment slew him, again sent a fierce red fire across his skin. Quite inappropriately, he laughed, long and bitter and cold and breaking, he laughed. 

The Chief and the nurse both looked at him only briefly before the Chief hunkered down, put his hand on the nurse's shoulder, and said in a low, soothing tone, "Marie, why don't you go hunt down Dr. Grey?"

"No," Derek said. "No." He sniffled. He tried to collect himself, collect himself like he'd managed earlier with Meredith, force everything away into a tiny box in his mind, like he always did before a really difficult surgery, but nothing was working. Nothing. The effort left him a panting, sniffling mess.

The Chief turned to him and raised an eyebrow. "You don't expect me to let you drive like this?"

"Drive?" Derek asked.

"Well, you're certainly not staying here. I'm suspending you. As of right now. You need to get your head on straight."

"But, Chief..."

"No," Chief Webber said. "You're done, Shepherd. You just destroyed a couple thousand dollars worth of equipment, and you physically assaulted a fellow doctor. You're lucky I'm not firing you on the spot. Not to mention a patient just died on you."

"Nobody called neurology for a consult. She-"

"I didn't say it was your fault, Shepherd. But you're already a mess." And then the Chief began to pace, shake his head, mutter. "I should have made you take time off with Grey. This is partially my fault. We always make doctors take off when a loved one dies."

"But-"

The Chief shook his head. "No, Shepherd. I heard about that little scene in the cafeteria a few hours ago, too. And frankly, I don't want to hear any more. Go home. Take tomorrow off. Take the weekend off. When you come back, I'll set you up with a peer counselor, you will apologize profusely to Dr. Wyatt, and you will not be doing any surgeries. None. Zip. Nada. Until I have absolute confidence that you're firing on all cylinders. Spend some time with Grey, Shepherd. Go have fun. Relax. Get some sleep. Do something that doesn't involve this hospital. Stop fixing everyone else when you should be fixing yourself."

Derek nodded, didn't protest. Everything felt empty and cold, and it all continued to rebel. He sniffled. Shook. He flexed his scalpel hand, stared at it in wonder, flexed it again, suddenly wishing he could jam a scalpel into his own brain, erase all the crap that had just happened, was happening right then, just carve the temporal lobe right out. Then Meredith wouldn't be drowning all the time, and even if she were, all his feelings about it would be gone. Everything would be numb, and not the numb that was gnawing at his innards right then, but really numb. The emotions would be... just... gone. Carved out. Excised. In a bloody pile of brain bits at the bottom of the biohazard bin. He flexed his hands again and dropped them to his lap.

They kept shaking.

"Hey," Meredith said, her voice dripping with pity and concern and all sorts of things Derek didn't want. Chief Webber and Derek both looked up. She stood leaning against the doorframe, clean and clipped, far from displaying the haggard features he'd left her with in the on-call room, but she looked worried just the same. Her eyes watered in that quivery way that said to him, just to him, that barely was she not crying right now. Only barely. 

Chief Webber walked over to her, whispered in hushed tones, so soft that Derek couldn't make out the words. A tear slipped down Meredith's cheek. Derek crumpled even more. They were treating him like a two-year-old, and now he'd made her cry. "I'm sitting right here," he snapped. "You only whisper like that for patients. I'm not a fucking patient."

"I was just telling Dr. Grey that she needs to take you home to relax and that I'm giving her the rest of the week off," Chief Webber said, his voice clipped, annoyed. He always ranted, endless and unhappy to his confidants when one of his surgeons went off the deep end. This rant, the one that was spinning and twisting in the Chief's brain right this moment, the one that would feature Dr. Derek Shepherd, world-class neurosurgeon, would be slathered all over the hallways later that day and the day after, no doubt, bouncing from gossip to gossip like a veritable volleyball. As an actual confidant, he'd listened to the raving about Dr. Burke, about Dr. Bailey, about Dr. Stevens and those damned crazy interns, watched as the words had leaked into the frenzied gossip circuit. He'd never thought, never ever thought there would be a rant about him. It made him want to vomit.

And so Derek didn't reply, just looked at the floor, his knees, the coffee table, anything in the direction of down, like a scolded little kid. The Chief left after a few more words, and then Meredith was sitting beside him, her warm, lithe, little frame soaking him with her presence. She rubbed his back and whispered to him while he sat there watching his hands shaking. After a few moments, she shifted, grabbed his hands in hers, and started massaging the joints. Normally, it would have done something for him, felt good, relaxing, but he stared at his hands as she worked them over and felt nothing. Nothing at all.

"You want to go home now?" she whispered.

He shook his head. "No," he said, choking on the word. "I don't want to move." He knew if he tried to walk right now, tried to do anything functional, she would see how utterly damaged he was. And the long, long walk from the surgical wing to the parking lot... everyone would be staring. Staring at the crazy doctor who'd just flipped out, broke an operating room, and collapsed. Walking that far under the weight of all those stares, when he couldn't stop himself from shaking, couldn't stop himself from leaking an ugly, endless stream of tears... He couldn't do it. He just couldn't do it. Exhaustion tugged him deeper, deeper into a well of self-flagellation. 

"We could go out the loading dock exit," she said as if he'd actually voiced his fears. "All we need to do is make it to the elevator, Derek. Nobody you care about works at the loading dock. Nobody walks down that way. And you could sit back on the dock there while I bring the car around. You wouldn't have to go through the parking lot or the rest of the building."

He dropped his face into his hands and sighed. His cheeks were sticky with evaporated and new tears. His joints ached. His head throbbed. Nothing would hold still for him.

"We have to get out of here somehow, Derek," she prodded.

"Okay," he said. He jerked in a breath. "Okay."

He stood, swaying as the expected sheet of black wrapped around his field of view for a moment. It blotted away after he blinked once or twice. He wiped his face with the backs of his palms, scrubbed at the skin in furious motions, knowing all the while that it wouldn't do much good. 

He walked, slow and crumbled like an old man. He forced one foot to go after the other. He leaned against the wall, feeling the consequences of not eating well for practically three weeks like a hundred pound barbell dragging down over his shoulders, yanking him into the floor. The people who wandered past them this way and that as he and Meredith made their way to the elevator didn't look at him, save for a glance now and then, but they were the kind of fidgety, darting glances that said they really were scrutinizing him, they just didn't want him to know it.

He and Meredith made it to the elevator. He waited, resting his weight on the railing on the wall while Meredith stepped forward and jammed the down button with her index finger. He closed his eyes, waiting, waiting, waiting. Meredith stood next to him, close, just a breath away, and he made a game out of listening to her soft inhales and exhales. I can hold on to this railing for three more breaths without collapsing, he thought. And then when he made it to that goal, he made a new one. Five breaths. 

He was in the middle of trying to make it to seven when Meredith touched his arm, light and fleeting. He opened his eyes as the elevator dinged. Things swam in front of him but settled when he blinked again. He took another breath and shuffled forward, eyeing the railing in the elevator with a sort of lust. He wilted with relief when nobody followed them into the enclosed space, and then he collapsed against the handhold on the sidewall. 

Meredith leaned forward and pushed the button for sub floor 1. The elevator rumbled to life, made him stumble just a little when it began to drop, and she turned with a smile. "This is our elevator, you know," she said. "You're not going to jump me, are you?"

Despite himself, Derek chuckled, light, harsh, grating against his pain. "Mere-" he said.

"I could do the jumping," she whispered, each syllable bringing her a sauntering step closer. Then she leaned into him and kissed him, long, and sensual, and deep. Her tongue darted into his mouth. He reached out to grip her, to keep from falling over, and suddenly they were plastered up against the corner. The elevator railing dug into the small of his back.

When the elevator dinged, the doors trundling open to reveal the empty loading bay floor, Meredith pulled back, panting. He caught himself on the railing, caught himself to keep from tipping over as the energy slipped out of him again. He licked his lips. Swallowed. But at least the leaking tears had stopped, if only for a moment. 

"You'll be okay, Derek," she whispered. "We'll be okay."

He didn't reply, didn't have the words to tell her how much he wanted that to be true.


	16. Chapter 16

**Author's Notes: Okay... 20 parts? Pipe dream. I just started writing part 20 and a conclusion it does not make. I'm not sure how much farther past 20 this story will go, but it will definitely go past. I just wanted to thank everyone again for the feedback and kind words and encouragement! Also, thanks for being patient while I brought Derek down so low. I know some people found it difficult to read.**

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Derek waited for her, perched and trembling on the lip of the loading dock while she left to go get the car. He'd looked so fragile sitting there that she'd almost been afraid to leave him alone, but she'd swallowed, sucked it up, given him a quick kiss on the cheek, and had said, "I'll be right back." He hadn't replied, hadn't really spoken much at all since she'd liberated him from the break room, except for that tortured whisper of her name just before she'd jumped him in the elevator.

She walked, making a point of being slow and steady about it, until she was out of view around the corner, positive that she was far enough away for her own turmoil to spill out without touching him, and then she ran. Her feet pounded on the pavement as she breezed to her car. The tough, unyielding asphalt stabbed at her feet. Each time her soles met the ground, shocks of pain lanced up to her knees, telling her that she hadn't bought new sneakers in far too long, but at least the ache reminded her that she was alive, awake, breathing.

When the nurse had paged her up to the surgical wing to pick up Derek, she'd known, known before she'd even been told why she was being paged that it was about Derek. He'd left her too raw, too raw to deal with a 911 page, especially if anything had gone wrong, and with 911 pages… they usually did. And the timing, just a mere forty minutes or so after he'd left her in the on-call room, it was too perfect. So, she'd walked up to the nurse's station just in front of the hallway where the operating rooms were all situated, walked, prepared for the worst. She'd prepared herself for the worst, but all of it had been pointless. Reality had struck her down without remorse.

She'd seen the whole crowd of staff as it had hovered around the doors to OR 7, looking either down the hallway toward the break area or into the operating room past the swing doors, whispering, shaking their heads… "Don't you have something better to do?" she'd snapped. The crowd had dispersed, allowing her to see into the operating room, which had been in shambles. A crash cart had been flipped over on the ground. Bits of glass and other broken things had spread like stars in a galaxy across the floor. She'd gasped. Derek had done that?

A nurse she didn't know had come up behind her as she'd stared at the wreckage, had shook her head, and had said, "I hope Dr. Shepherd is okay. He's such a nice man."

Meredith had bit back tears as she'd walked to the break room at the end of the hall, but they'd managed to escape into gravity's pull when the Chief had walked up to her and explained the situation, all while Derek sat crying and shaking and broken on the couch behind them. She'd been struck with the bitter question, the bitter feeling, why had she ever, ever let him go off on that call like that? She should have chased him, dragged him back kicking and screaming… In her own turmoil, she'd just sort of let him go, allowed herself to take him at his word that he'd somehow manage...

Meredith shook her head, forcing herself back to the present. What was done was done. And Derek needed support right then, really needed it.

Izzie stood propped up against the driver's side door of Meredith's vehicle, her arms crossed, her eyes scanning the parking lot, apparently expecting Meredith to come from the other direction, the normal exit. Meredith had her keys out and was only several car lengths away when Izzie turned toward the sound of Meredith's pounding feet. If Izzie thought anything was odd about Derek not being there, she didn't voice it. Instead, she plummeted into hysterics.

"Meredith," she said. "I heard. I'm so, so sorry. I'm **so** sorry. You have no idea how much. I just wanted you guys to talk. I never intended to—"

"To drag him kicking and screaming into the deep end of the pool before he was ready?" Meredith snapped. The car doors clicked as she hit the unlock button on her keychain. "Because that's what you did. And now he's suspended, the doctor he clobbered may very well sue, and Derek's a twitching, broken mess."

Izzie swallowed. "I'm sorry. I just wanted you guys to talk. I just—"

Meredith sighed. "I just wish you'd talked to **me**, Izzie. I was making progress. Slow progress, but at least it was less jarring for him than your method!" She yanked open the driver's side door and slipped into the driver's seat while her shoulder protested the abuse.

"I'm sorry," Izzie replied, sounding on the verge of tears.

Meredith looked at Izzie as she stood there, and she sighed, suddenly feeling a little bit guilty. Izzie had meant well… Her plan might just have worked, too, if it hadn't been for that 911 page, but… She thought of Derek, wobbling, red-faced and shaky, toward the elevator, and the anger speared her again. Too many people were falling apart today, and it was all because of Izzie. "Look, I'm just too mad at the moment to deal with you, so leave it. I don't have the words right now, Izzie. I just… I don't have words."

Izzie looked at her shoes. "Okay."

"I won't be home tonight," Meredith said.

"Okay," Izzie replied.

Meredith slammed the door shut, and Izzie took the cue to back away. With only one pained glance in the rearview mirror, Meredith drove the car around to the other side of the hospital.

Derek had moved. He sat Indian-style, elbows against his knees, hands propping his face up. She reached across and pushed the door open for him as she pulled up. He slid, slow and deliberate, off the platform, stood for a second, gained his bearings, and then shuffled over to the car, all while Meredith sat, biting her lip, forcing herself not to jump out and help. He collapsed with a heaving breath onto the passenger side seat, and after several moments of panting, pulled the seatbelt across his shoulder and lap.

Derek leaned his head against the glass and watched, his face blank as the world passed by, his eyes watering and red, but at least they weren't spilling over anymore. Meredith navigated through a tangle of cars all trying to exit the parking lot at once, and as she sat waiting for her turn to turn out onto the street, she flipped on the heater. A low rush of air started. He shifted in his seat.

She stopped at the first drive through she saw and ordered him a large lemonade. Off moping in his own little world, he didn't really seem to notice until she was pulling out of the drive through lane and shoving the cold plastic cup at him.

"Drink this, Derek," she said. "You need the fluids and the sugar."

He took the cup in a shaky grasp, and it dipped as the weight of it hit him, dragging his arm down. He didn't say anything, he just took a sip now and then. Condensation from the cup left dark, wet rings on his scrubs.

That was when the silence morphed into something painful, something awkward. She didn't want to mention anything about what had just happened. That was a festering wound, and he didn't need her poking at it. She couldn't go into generic small talk, either. How was your day was probably the stupidest question ever invented. So, what did that leave? She couldn't think of a single thing that didn't sound dumb or false.

So, she reached across the parking brake and rubbed his knee. He didn't twitch or look over or do anything promising. He just sipped on the lemonade, watching as things drifted past the windows, looking beat-down, tired, ready to collapse. Defeated. She frowned, felt her heart pang with worry.

"You missed your exit," he said, his voice rough and weighted with a sort of infectious, bone-weary tiredness. Meredith felt it lift off his tone and start dragging on her own shoulders like a parachute catching wind.

"We're not going to my place," she replied. "We're going to your place." 

She'd thought about it from the moment she'd seen Derek sitting broken in the break room. The last thing he needed right now was Izzie, Cristina, and all her other friends barging in and out at all crazy hours of the day and night. She thought it would be better for him, more comforting, to be away from it all, surrounded by his things, his stuff.

"Oh," he said and settled back against the window.

Meredith frowned, surprised that he didn't even comment on it, the fact that she was taking them to the trailer. They hadn't stayed there in weeks. Months, actually, now that she thought about it.

"We're not taking the ferry, I hope," he said after several moments.

She ticked her gaze to him. "I'd like to stay away from ferries for a while."

"Me too," he said.

"What's an extra hour and a half, anyway? Besides, this is more scenic." 

"Anything with you in the frame is scenic, Mere," he said as he stared out the window, but his voice sounded like it was crushing itself under the weight of something bigger, something awful, and it made a lump form in her throat.

He took another sip of his lemonade. He closed his eyes, sitting silently, but his tense posture, his stilted breathing, the way he trembled just barely on the edge between motion and stillness, made it seem far from relaxing or peaceful. After a few minutes, his breaths evened out, and she thought he might be napping. She left him alone, happy to let him continue. Any sleep he could get was a precious thing.

But, too soon for her tastes, he was shifting again, moving. He fidgeted, reached for the radio, fumbling with it until he landed on the station he wanted, and then leaned back in the seat. He sighed and re-settled. His eyes drifted shut again.

Another long, painful silence sliced the air between them, dividing the car into harshly delineated his and her zones. She swallowed against the well of tears, and found herself wanting so badly to just pull the car over, to just stop on the side of the road, pull him into her arms, and sit there forever, if only it would assure him that she was fine, that he was okay, that life was still marching on at a jaunty little pace, and it still included her in it.

She reached across the parking brake and rested her hand on his leg, just relishing the contact. The fabric of his scrubs was damp from the remnants of when the cup had rested there. But she didn't care, just let the warmth seep past the cold, into her fingers. She squeezed him.

They would be okay. Things would be okay.

And then she heard him sniffle. He sucked in a breath and turned his head away. "I'm sorry," he mumbled, stumbling over the syllables. He thumped his forehead against the window, scrubbed his hands at his face. He cleared his throat with a tortured cough. "God, what's wrong with me?" he asked.

"You're tired, Derek," she replied. "You're tired, and stressed, and your body chemistry is so far out of whack it's probably vacationing in China. It's okay to be upset." Her heart broke as she listened to him, trying to collect himself, trying to collect himself only to fail and fail again. Finally, he gave up and sat staring out the window, eyes leaking and leaking, silent, tormented, until she couldn't stand it anymore, couldn't stand how dejected and lost he looked. She pulled the car over to the shoulder and turned the ignition off.

"It's okay to be upset, Derek," she told him. "Just let it out. You're allowed to be a mess every once in a while."

"You died," he said. "You died, and I couldn't stop it."

She bit her lip, wondering, wondering if she should breach the topic she'd so carefully kept far away from him. But as he sat there, staring at her, his eyes pleading with her for anything, anything to make it all go away, she found it easy to confess, "But you did, Derek. You did stop it. I don't remember much. Just bits. But I do know you're one of the reasons, the big reason, I fought so hard to get back."

He blinked at her, his eyes streaked over with tears.

And then she was babbling, babbling, babbling, anything to fill the silence, to tell him, to assure him, to love him. "I was there, Derek. Serotonin, a dream, bad digestion, whatever it was, I was there, right there, tangoing with the end, and then I thought about all the things I'd miss. My friends. My job. You. All those moments with you. I wanted those moments, Derek. I love you. I love my life. I love my friends. Usually, I love my work. And I swear to you, Derek, that when I die, hopefully a very long time from now when we're old and gray and living on a small private island in the Bahamas, it will be because death fought me tooth and claw and won. Not because I gave up."

She reached across and brushed his cheek, let the stubble prick her, prove to her that he was alive. He was alive, and she would make him okay, no matter what it took. "I'm here," she said. "I'm alive. I'm okay. I'm breathing. And I'm happy, Derek. I'm happy to be with you."

He leaned into her hand, took it in his own, let his eyes slip shut, and he sat there, breathing, breathing, breathing. "You really are, aren't you… Happy, I mean," he said after a long, long moment of soaking her in.

"Yes. I just wish you'd join me with your own pair." 

"Um," he said. He cleared his throat, coughed a little, and behind the misery, he smiled, just a ghost of one, but it was a smile, nonetheless, and it made her melt.

She swatted him. "Of rose-colored glasses, Derek. You have a dirty mind."

"Oh, come on," he protested. "You totally baited me."

"Anything if it gets you to laugh," she replied.

He looked back out the window for a moment, swallowed, licked his lips. The exhaustion came off him in waves, and yet he turned, turned back to her and gave her another almost smile. "So, you want to retire in the Bahamas?" he asked.

She shrugged. "Honestly, I just threw that in there on a whim."

"I always pictured myself in a cabin in the middle of nowhere," he mused. 

"You could be in a cabin in the middle of nowhere on an island…"

"I meant something like Alaska."

"Alaska?" she asked, dumbstruck. He couldn't be serious. 

"Yeah."

"Well," she said. "Thank God I've got some decent warning. That's, what, at least fifteen, twenty years to fix you? Are you going to retire early, on time, or are you going to be one of those people who works until you die?" 

"Fix me?" he exclaimed, ignoring her questions. "No, it's time for me to fix **you**."

Meredith wrinkled up her nose and made a face that she hoped conveyed her disgust at that prospect. "When we're old and frail and senile," she said, "You'll probably be singing a different tune. 'Gosh, Mere,' I bet you'll say. 'Why can't we go where it's warmer?'" She made her best old geezer imitation, lowering her tone so that it scratched and scraped across the lower registers of her vocal capabilities.

He shook his head. A brief, stilted chuckle erupted from his lips. "You're mocking me."

She snorted. "Alaska? Seriously?" 

"It's the last frontier!" he insisted.

"Where we will **not** boldly go," she replied.

"That's the final frontier, Mere."

"Whatever."

The conversation died at that point, but there was no torment in the quiet that followed. Derek wiped his face with his palms and was back to the relative stability of red, puffy eyes. When he leaned his head against the window this time, he still dripped with exhaustion, but his misery wasn't so thick in the air that she was choking on it. She squeezed his knee and started up the car again. The music from the radio blared back to life along with the rush of the heaters.

After several minutes back on the road, a bouncy little rhythm flooded out of the speakers, and she gasped, recognizing the tune within moments. "Hey, Derek, it's your favorite."

He grunted, but didn't open his eyes. "What?"

She laughed and turned it up. "The Clash! I can't believe they're still playing this junk on the radio."

His lips curled up in a smile. "You know you love them." 

"Hardly," she said.

She left the volume up until the song faded into the annoying chatter of one of the DJs, who she thought sounded rather like a weasel. When she glanced at Derek, he was asleep in a completely dead to the world, nothing's gonna budge me sense. And she gladly left him to it.

The sun had started to dip below the horizon as Meredith pulled the car up to Derek's trailer. "Derek," she whispered. "We're here." She brushed his shoulder with her hand.

He inhaled, snuffled, blinked a bit, peeled his face off the window.

"Welcome back," she said.

Without words, he got out of the car, shuffled over to the trailer, and let himself in. She trailed behind him, letting him go at his own pace. He made a pit stop in the bathroom, so she sat at the small kitchen table. When the shower turned on, she settled in and grabbed a magazine, the first on the top of the stack that sat in the bin by the table. It was some fishing periodical, as boring to her as watching her roots grow in after a highlight job, but at least it gave her something to focus on. And you never knew when salmon mating rituals would be important.

The shower turned off and he wobbled out, towel wrapped around his waist. Then he wandered over to the bed and fell on top of it. He lay there panting while she got up, pulled out some clean boxers for him, and tossed them at him. He grunted when they landed on his face.

He struggled to slip the boxers on, but he didn't ask for help, didn't seem to want it, so she contented herself with staring out the window, giving him some small shred of privacy. When she turned back, he was already a lump under the covers. She climbed under the comforter and joined him. The waning daylight filtered through the thin weave, and she could just make him out in the dimness, staring at her.

"Hi," she said, smiling.

"Hey," he said back.

He sighed, shuffled forward a few inches, and then pulled her toward him and wrapped her in his arms. He didn't say anything. He just watched her, breathed her in at the base of her neck, just over her shoulder. His warm breaths caressed her skin in an even rhythm. He drifted off in moments, but his grip never slackened.


	17. Chapter 17

Derek woke up in a series of very long stages. For a while, he dozed, semi-aware of his surroundings, semi-aware of the world passing by as he lay there, but as comfortable as he was, as deep as the weariness had its claws sunk into his bones, he languished for a long, long time. Eventually, sound filtered in. The birds outside chirped. Branches snapped as wildlife moved through the canopy of trees encircling the clearing where his trailer was situated. And something thunked very ominously just outside the trailer wall. Still, he languished. Languished until the pain of waking up started to poke through the haze. His bladder was full. His stomach rumbled, having had no attention in far, far too long.

He groaned. Threw the pillow over his head. Tried to shut it all out even as something thunked again outside. He wasn't even curious about it. He just wanted to go back. Back to the deep, far, away. Wherever. But not there.

When the sun began to overheat the skin on his neck, when the light pushed through the comforter and licked his back with an unyielding, slow burn, he finally gave up. He threw the covers back and scrubbed his face with his hands, opening his eyes blearily.

The trailer was empty, and whatever was making noise outside did it again. He hoped it wasn't a bear. He stood on protesting muscles, stretched, tried to blink away the fuzz. After making sure he wasn't going to just fall over, he pulled out a shirt from his dresser, threw it on, and went to relieve himself in the trailer's small bathroom. He stood over the toilet, leaning against the wall, barely functional, just standing there and letting himself drain, not thinking, numb, not even really caring about the relief. He finished, washed his hands, and continued his slow crawl toward the door, toward the strange noises.

Grocery bags lined the tiny countertop. A small plate of fresh English muffins sat on a plate on the table. There was a sticky note that said, "Eat me!" attached. He grabbed one of the muffins and began to chew. It was rough on his mouth and hard to swallow, but as the first bits of it hit his whining stomach, the sudden quiet in his body made it well worth the annoyance of eating it. He finished off two before he wiped his mouth and continued onward, moving out the door and down the steps with slow, cautious steps.

Meredith crouched on the deck, hovering over his tackle box with a fat yellow book in one hand. She glanced at the book and then to the box as though she were checking things off on a list. Things thunked and clanked as she shoved items aside, routed through them. She looked up as he came down the steps and collapsed into one of the chairs.

"Hey," she said, her face bright and relaxed as she stood up and brushed her pants off.

He leaned back in the chair, soaked up the sun's rays. Even after so much sleep, everything just felt… difficult. Moving took focus. Thinking took focus. He felt like his whole body was lagging behind his brain, like he was being dragged through molasses and all his thoughts were sticking, clinging, hanging somewhere behind him.

"What are you doing?" he asked after a long sigh that did nothing to wipe the tiredness away.

"Learning what all this junk is," she said. She held up the book so he could see the title. Fishing for Dummies.

"I forgot I still had that," he said, leaning forward in a glacial motion to take it from her. He flipped through it. Why did she care what was in a tackle box?

She grinned. "Found it on your shelf. I even know what a buzzbait is now." 

"I'm impressed," he said, smiled despite the weariness. He frowned and let his eyes drift shut. Why was he still so tired? He rubbed his face again. "How long was I asleep?"

"It's almost noon, Derek. You were out for about eighteen hours."

He sighed. "Well, thanks for breakfast, or lunch, I guess."

"No problem. I just went to that little market down the road. Took about a half hour. Honestly it was for me as much as you. When I woke up this morning wanting coffee, only to discover you had nothing but a half-finished jar of peanut-butter and some stale crackers, well, let's just say you're lucky you were sleeping like a coma patient." She paused to raise her fingers in mock claws, making a gnarled, crazy face at him. Then she relaxed into a smile again.

"Sorry," he said. " I kind of cleared this place out when I moved in with you."

"I'm seeing that now. You could have mentioned it."

He didn't really know what to say to that. Yesterday had been… God, he didn't even want to think about it yet. Not yet. Not when he was here with Meredith, far, far away from everything he'd managed to destroy. He loosed a bitter, wretched chuckle, gripping his face in his hands as he leaned forward. "I was a bit out of it yesterday."

She touched his back, rubbed his shoulder. He leaned into it as she frantically explained. "No, I didn't mean that, Derek," she said. "Of course I didn't. I meant the moving in with me part. I didn't realize it was official."

He looked up at that, surprised. "Is there something wrong with it being official?" 

"No…"

"What is it?"

"It's stupid."

He sighed. "Mere…"

"It's just that I brought you here because I thought you'd feel more comfortable," she said, and her face progressed into a dark, sad expression that made his heart ache on top of all the weariness. She continued, "But now I find out it's not even your home anymore. How did I not know that?" 

He was amazed at how distraught she was over it, how upset she looked, and for a brief moment he felt guilty, guilty for being in such a sorry state that she felt she had to worry about everything she said or did, felt guilty that she was walking around him like she thought he might break with one wrong word. And at the same time, he felt so fragile, so incredibly lost, so bone-deep tired that he didn't think he could reassure her, because he wasn't so sure himself that he wouldn't just break again. The lassitude that gnawed at him was a sort of pain, an ache, a throb. At least Meredith finally knew, finally understood, and there was no longer the pressure to explain, pressure that had eroded his nerves from the moment he'd realized there was a problem… That, at least, was a relief.

He leaned forward and pulled her down into his lap, into his arms. "Mere…" he said, his voice rough and gravelly.

She stared into his eyes, just inches away, and her expression crumpled further. "We really do suck at talking, don't we?"

He leaned into her, drawing his mouth down on hers in a long, heady kiss. She squeaked at the unexpected assault, but the sound drowned in the back of her throat, and as she realized what was happening, she leaned into it, wrapped her arms around his neck. He licked the gap between her lips, pushing her mouth open, and plunged, drinking down the minted taste of her toothpaste, drinking all of her down. Her fingers clenched, and her nails dug into his skin. He didn't care. She sucked on his lip as he pulled back a fraction, and then finally all the way, panting.

"Not all talking is with words," he said, tone low and growling. He could easily get drunk on nothing but her…

She smiled, swatted her index finger cutely at his nose. "Smooth."

"I try," he replied. He leaned his head down onto her shoulder, relishing the contact. "And it's really okay, coming here, I mean. I don't think…" He sighed. "I don't think I'm ready for people yet."

He thought about her house, thought about all her friends, always tromping in and tromping out at the most unexpected moments. It was sometimes humorous, sometimes awkward, but most often just plain annoying. And with the way he felt right now, had they barged in on him and Meredith in the bedroom like they always seemed to, it probably would have been the equivalent to drawing a piece of glass across a chalkboard, long and slow and squealing, until he really did break again. Just the thought sent a pain lancing sharply through his head. He shuddered, tried to control the sudden shake that had started to rumble through his muscles, and ended up panting, swallowing, letting out a small moan.

Meredith brushed his cheek with her palm. "Are you okay?" she asked.

"I'm…" He screwed his eyes shut, and the sudden shakes bled away. "Not quite myself yet."

She curled up against him, hugged him, just sat there for a long set of moments, giving him time to relish the comfort. He sighed, miserably accepting the dull, tired feeling that came back as his nerves resettled.

"So," she said after a long silence. "I was thinking you could take me fishing today if you're not too tired. Seeing as how I've had nothing to read but fishing magazines and stuff while you've been down for the count. I feel that I'm properly prepped for the fishing experience now."

"Oh, are you?" He laughed, trying to picture Meredith actually attempting to fish. She would probably hate it. She'd never even expressed an interest before… Oh. A lump formed in his throat when he realized what she was doing.

"Yes," she said, oblivious to his sudden realization. "The experience where you fish, and I watch. But at least I'll be a spectator with knowledge."

"Meredith, do you have any idea how boring it is to watch somebody fish? I'm not ruining my one chance to get you into it by putting you to sleep," he said with a dry laugh.

She was doing this for him, he was certain. She was trying to get him to do something she knew he thought was relaxing. Something that held no entertainment value for her whatsoever. She was trying so hard… She was trying so hard, and he didn't have the heart to tell her that the thing he desired most right at that moment was to just go lie in bed all day in a stupor with her in his arms, to just let the weary crush suck him down into a dark, dark hole and stay there. He didn't have the heart to depress her like that, not when she was doing this. Not when she looked so happy... 

"Derek," she said, breaking him from his thoughts. "I could watch you watch paint dry, and it would be heaven right now."

"If I fish, you fish," he insisted. At least he would try and make sure she was entertained. He had an extra reel. He could teach her…

"We fish or no fish?" she asked. 

He nodded. "Exactly." 

"So, do we need his and her tackle boxes?" She shifted, grinding into him. "Or will this be a joint affair?"

"Don't make me pun about the pole, please," he replied.

She grinned at him. "Dirty man." 

"You like it when I talk dirty." 

"I do," she purred.

He sighed, pushed on her arms, put her on her feet, and stood, slowly, wincing as his body complained. His body really just wanted to sit there. "Let me go throw some jeans on," he said.

"You can't fish in your boxers?" she asked.

"You only wish," he said as he closed the trailer door behind him and went to grab some clothing that would stand up to the cool chill of the air. The lake was an open area, and it would be windier there.

When he came back out of the trailer clad in jeans and a thin windbreaker, she was struggling with several fishing poles and his tackle box, all in a stumbling, jumbled mess that clanked and clattered as she shifted awkwardly from foot to foot. "Whoa, whoa," he said. "Let me take some of that."

He took the fishing poles and let her deal with the tackle box.

They made it all the way to the long dock on the lake before he felt the intense need to sit. He put the poles down and lowered himself onto the smooth, worn wood at the very tip of the dock. His feet dangled a foot or so over the water. The cool breeze swept against his skin, and he leaned his head back with a groan. The earthy scent of water and mud twisted back into his throat as he inhaled. Small waves lapped under the dock among the reeds and other muck and mire. The whole scene was surreal, so calm, so peaceful, and normally, he would have loved it. But anger erupted out of the brief calm like a crocodile thundering out of the water for a gazelle. He was mad at himself, mad that he didn't feel at all like fishing, and mad that his body had betrayed him yet again, forced him to give up his ruse.

Meredith frowned. She put the tackle box down with a thunk and sat down next to him. She ran her hand over his shoulder and leaned into him. "We don't have to do this, you know. If you're tired…"

"I slept for eighteen hours already," he snapped.

"Derek…"

He leaned forward, collapsing his face into his hands. Why did he have to feel so lousy? "I'm okay, Mere. Really," he said dully.

She didn't look like she believed him. Not one bit.

But it didn't matter. One moment he was looking at his beautiful Meredith, sitting there, and the next moment his brain finally registered the water all around them, the water, sparkling in the sunlight, and the fear seized him up and sent him into a choking frenzy. No… No, no, no.

"Derek!"

He scooted back from the dock, startled at the sudden strike of imagery against his brain. "I'm…" he gasped, swaying back and forth, clutching his arms to his chest as he took the drowning Meredith that hovered right in front of him and tried to shove her out of the way. He wasn't going to let this happen anymore. He wasn't. "I'm fine," he finished weakly as the picture drifted away, leaving him trembling, trying to swallow, trying not to fall apart. 

"You look like you just saw a ghost or something." She looked around. Looked around at the water. "Oh. Oh… Oh, God."

He pulled his knees up to his chest and breathed. She moved her hands over him, on his back, his chest, rubbing, soothing. "I'm sorry, Derek," she said. "I wasn't thinking. I'm such an idiot. I just wanted to do something that would help you relax…" 

"No," he said. "No, it's okay. Just give me a minute." He panted, trying to get a grip on himself, trying and trying and failing. He was breaking again, and he was furious at himself for it, furious that he was letting this happen.

Her voice speared through the sudden haze. "Do you want to go back?" 

"No!" he snapped. "No, I won't let this do this to me anymore. I just need… I just…" Finally, after teetering at the edge for several moments, the panic that had threatened to shred him again circled the drain and gurgled away, leaving him exhausted and weary and staring dully at the water, hating it, hating the pain it brought him. 

She hugged him, hugged him so hard he grunted. "I'm here, Derek. I'm alive. I'm okay. See?"

He nodded, mute, unable to do anything but agonize.

"Derek, give me your windbreaker," she said after letting him sit there and stew for several moments. 

"What?" he asked, shook from his bitter musing. "Why?" 

"Just give it to me…"

He shrugged it off and handed it to her. "What are you doing, Mere?" he asked as she laid the windbreaker flat a few feet behind him. She shuffled around, until she was sitting just in front of it.

"Derek," she said. "Look at me, not the water." She clutched the front of his shirt, gathering a small tent of it in her fingers, and then she pulled him forward into a kiss.

Her lips brushed his, enough to swallow the word when he groaned in return, "Mere." The unsettled feeling that'd hounded him seemed insignificant in retrospect. She used the hand not gripping his shirt to snake over his shoulder. The pad of her thumb followed the line of his jugular, soft, searching. Then her fingers wound through his hair, riding up over his scalp and down to the nape of his neck before she stopped the wave of motion. She splayed her hand against the back of his skull and rested there, using the leverage to draw him closer and tease at his lips with her own. She licked along the line of skin where his mouth met his chin.

"You're prickly," she whispered as she leaned into his throat and wandered down it, teasing, nipping.

"Sorry," he said between pants. "Didn't shave…"

She shrugged. "Doesn't matter."

Her hands rubbed up and down along the ripples of his heaving ribcage, but on one downward sweep, she paused at his waistline, pulling, fiddling, until she'd un-tucked his shirt. She sent her warm hands wandering up underneath the fabric.

"Let's make some good memories of the water, Derek," she whispered just next to his ear. Her roaming hands curled up over top his shoulders, and as she lay back on the dock on top of his windbreaker, she pulled him down on top of her.

He kissed her, long and deep and full. The sound of the lake water lapping under the dock, the sparkle of the sunlight as it beat down on the water and glanced off like a thousand shards of glass… None of it seemed to matter anymore. The scenery unfurled and sank away like petals falling from a dying flower, and all he cared about right then was her.

He curled against her in a serpentine motion, grinding his groin into the spot where her thigh met her abdomen. Her fingers rippled along the curve of his back, and he found himself writhing, trying to help her peel his shirt off. The sun blanketed his back in a warm sheet, just as a light, chilly breeze twisted against his newly exposed skin.

He kissed her, fervent, desirous, needing as a slow fire began to pulse and burn within him. He struggled with the buttons of her jeans as he pillaged her mouth, chin, neck, and collarbone in a downward trail of lust. He slipped his hand underneath the lacey edge of her panties, low below her belly button, and slid down, down, down into the warmth.

Meredith gasped, rolled back along her spine in an arching spasm, and then her hands were fumbling at his jeans, fumbling, clawing, shredding in a craze to release him to the air. He fought to hold still for her, fought until he shook, but he felt her hands moving, even through the denim, and the entire effort was futile. He pushed himself toward her hands, pushed against her.

"Mere," he gasped, choked, growled as she peeled his jeans off past his hips and pushed down on the waistband of his boxers. Then she had him in her hands, teasing, stroking, pulling, and he nearly collapsed in a frenzied pile of gasps on top of her. She nipped and licked and sucked along his shoulder while she continued to work him into a burning, nonsensical mess, until he thrust into her palms not out of some well-conceived plan to seduced and pleasure, but because he just couldn't stop himself.

He looked up, looked across the water as she sent him into a fervor that had him rocking back. The lake expanded out around them, gleaming, sparkling, but it seemed dim in comparison to her. He met her eyes and found the center of his world, smiling, staring back. "Take me," she said, and at the sound of the words, he was yanking her pants down to her knees, just far enough to slip inside her.

He pushed in to the hilt and paused there as his mind fell into a tunnel with Meredith at the end of it. He waited, panting, panting, trying to regain his equilibrium. But equilibrium and lust for Meredith did not play well together, and so he stayed there, not moving, not doing anything, just struggling to hold himself together.

"You okay?" she asked. She snaked her hands around him, her skin sliding like silk across his lower back and lower.

He swallowed. "Trying desperately not to finish."

"Oh?" she asked, a wicked glint growing in her gaze. She clenched around him, and he thought he would die.

"Stop," he said, his voice tearing his throat to shreds. "Or I'll never finish you before I—" He couldn't complete the sentence. The need for air plowed him into submission, and he just hovered, breathing, breathing. He struggled to think, to do something, to do anything but loose the fire building, relentless, screaming.

"Okay," she said, faux-pouting. "I'll be good." And for a few moments, she was. She was very good. But then she started to shift and move in small jerky, thrusting motions as though she couldn't stop herself.

"Mere," he gasped.

She grunted. "You try holding still when—"

Her words cut off in a moan as he finally let himself begin to move, begin to ride her. They moved in an even, rocking rhythm, panting, quiet, watching each other, taking turns teasing each other to the point just before collapse, and then pulling back, trading off, until they were both shaking, twitching piles of barely syllabic lust.

His teeth began to chatter as he built her to a frenzy yet again, his own thoughts torn to pieces long ago in the jaws of unending arousal. Meredith looked at him, her eyes glassy with pleasure, her lower lip clenched between her teeth as she moaned and writhed and quivered beneath him. She looked at him, and he looked at her, and, wordless, they arrived at the same thought, on the same pinnacle, in the same stretched moment.

Go.

He thrust once more, careening over the volatile line between the slope and the fall, just as she fell into panting, moaning hysterics underneath him. The world tumbled away from him in swirling haze of black fuzz. His control was ripped away. Hers was already gone.

They collapsed. Collapsed in a heaving, tortured pile as the pleasure rolled over them, a crushing, pounding tsunami. All he could do was ride it through, ride it while it took him away from himself and plundered his mind of anything coherent. He lay there shaking as the wave receded, lay there on his stomach, still sheathed, but unable to move or care. She breathed, heaving beneath him, not talking as she wallowed in her own haze.

He forced himself to shift a little to the side, taking the brunt of his weight from her, but it was all he could manage, all he could do. The warm air from her gasping buffeted his neck as he lay there with his arm draped across her stomach, his cheek resting flat against his windbreaker against the dock, chin resting overtop her head. He peered out at the expanse of water. The small waves lapping under the dock, the occasional birdcall, the breeze, the way the sun laved his back, all of it was just background, background for his Meredith, who breathed softly against his skin, warm and full of life. They lay that way for what seemed like hours before he finally found a word, two words, three…

"I love you," he said, breathless, wilting with the effort of speaking. He was looking at the water, looking at it, and Meredith lay partially underneath him, her body moving as she inhaled, as she exhaled, not dead, not cold, not blue, but very much alive and hot and peach-colored. Her fingers caressed the skin across his hips.

He finally managed to roll off her and onto his back. She shifted, settling into the crook of his shoulder with a sigh. "I love you too, Derek. So much it's scary sometimes," she said.

He brushed his fingers through her hair. "I know the feeling, Mere," he whispered.

"I know you do," she said, her voice deep and suddenly serious, so serious…

She pulled his hand into her own and worried at his knuckles. They lay next to each other, staring at the sky, which was dotted with all sorts of puffy, blobby clouds. The sun darted in and out between them.

"So," she said. "This is a good memory then?" 

He nodded. "Definitely in my top ten."

She closed her eyes, leaned her cheek against his chest. "Good," she said, a slow, lazy smile spreading across her face.

They didn't get up for a long while.


	18. Chapter 18

Derek stared at her over his tight fan of cards, the line of his brow even and serious as he glanced at her and then back to his hand. He sat Indian-style opposite to her, his back resting against the pile of pillows at the head of the bed. She lay across the foot of the bed, her feet dangling off the side. An empty bowl of popcorn sat off to the side within an arm's reach of the both of them, and meandering trails of popcorn kernels and white, fluffy bits scattered across the bedspread in an outward fan from it. A small pile of cheap poker chips, the kind you could buy at a drugstore, sat in the middle of the bed like a strange offering.

A random movie played on the television behind them. They'd watched and provided lots of sarcastic commentary for a commercial-filled, very sanitized showing of Hot Shots, Part Deux. The network had begun showing something else after that, but she and Derek had already switched to other activities, and at this point, she doubted she could even list the names of the main characters.

She flicked her cards. They were worn, faded, well-used, and kind of bent from far too much shuffling, but they still smelled papery like new cards. A beat up queen of spades and a tired queen of hearts book-ended her otherwise lackluster hand. Just a pair. And this was after she'd exchanged three cards already. Glancing back at Derek didn't help. He had a great poker face, even if he had a crappy poker game. She watched his face, tried to see if he would trip up, make a tick, anything. His eyes twinkled, like he was daring her to just try and figure out what he had. She frowned. He had to be bluffing. He hadn't had anything better than a pair yet, and the likelihood of him having better than queens was kind of bad. "Call," she said, and tossed a chip down, though, in this game, the betting was mostly just for show.

She fanned her cards out in front of her and stared as he did the same. He had three threes to her two queens. Damn.

"Hah," he said, his lips curling up into a wolfish smirk as he swept the pot away into his betting pile. "You owe me a bra!"

"Derek, I haven't even lost my shirt yet. Bra stays, thanks." She pulled off her last sock, making a long, tantalizing show of it for him. His eyes followed the movements, and his lips parted just a sliver. She tossed the sock over her shoulder and relaxed back onto the bed. She was left with her with a shirt, bra, and panties. Not too bad. 

"You know," he said, looking down at his own state of undress. He had his right sock and his boxers still. His jeans, his shirt, and his other sock lay in a pile on the floor beside the bed, intertwined with her own heap of discarded clothing. He gestured to the two tiny gold studs on the nightstand. "It's really unfair that you got to count your earrings."

She grinned. "It's not my fault you didn't wear your watch today. Or a belt. I would have let you count those…"

He frowned, but from the twinkle in his eyes, she could tell he wasn't really that upset. "That's still remarkably unfair. I would be winning if it weren't for all your extras," he said.

She watched him for a moment, happy to see him acting so carefree. They'd slept in that morning, slept in and spent the rest of the day vegetating as their Saturday passed slowly by. It was something they'd both needed as much as breathing, as much as food, as much as any of the necessities. After all the heartache and emotional craziness, it was just nice to have a day dedicated to nothing but mental cotton candy. He still had occasional spells where he didn't seem quite… right. Moments where he'd get an odd, frenzied look in his eye. Sometimes he'd get visibly upset. Every time it happened, the trigger never seemed to be the same, never predictable. Once, he'd had issues when she'd come out of the shower, still dripping water, which had been understandable. Later, when she'd just been sitting there doing nothing and he'd gone a little wiggy, it hadn't made as much sense, at least not to her. But, usually, they got through it together in a few minutes, and, overall, the improvement she'd seen in just the two days they'd been there, secluded from the world, had been phenomenal. 

She grinned at him. "Is it my fault you don't accessorize?"

He pouted. "I'll have to invest in cufflinks."

"Those don't go with t-shirts." 

"So? I could stick them somewhere, I'm sure."

She laughed. "You're being a very sore loser, you know. It's not like I've got anything you haven't seen before. You're probably making me naked with your brain right as we speak."

He raised his eyebrows and quirked his lips into a slanted smile that said nothing but naughty things. "We could play real poker naked, you know," he said. "That might be more fun."

She rolled onto her side and propped her face up on her hand, elbow jamming into the mattress. "We could do a lot of things naked that are way more fun than poker." 

"Did you have something in mind?"

She laughed. "If you win, I'll let you pick." 

"What if you win?" 

"I'll pick," she said with an evil grin.

"I get the impression that this is a win-win scenario," he said.

"I think you'd be right."

"Are you going to deal another hand?" he asked when she lingered too long doing nothing. "I want to get to the sex."

She snorted, picked up the cards, and began to shuffle in practiced, tight bridges. "This is really nice," she said.

"What is?"

"Just this… Being here with you, uninterrupted…"

She dealt them each a hand of cards. He picked his cards up, glanced at them, frowned, and put them back down, his earlier mirth suddenly crumbling into something serious. "You do have kind of a full house, Mere. No pun intended."

"George is gone," she said. She looked at her own hand. Ten high. Awful.

"Izzie more than makes up for it."

She put her hand down, noticing Derek hadn't picked his back up yet. "Izzie cooks!" she replied. And really, the great food, all the time, every meal… Meredith almost felt like a criminal for charging Izzie rent at this point.

Derek frowned. "Izzie lurks…"

"She does not lurk…" Meredith insisted, but on Derek's glare, she amended, "Okay, she sort of lurks."

Derek scooted across the bed, shoving all the poker chips and cards aside. He flipped the power switch on the remote, and the mumble of the television ceased. "Sort of?" he asked as he made a valiant effort at brushing away all the popcorn crumbs before he settled down along the length of her. He propped his head up on his elbow and hovered, inches from her. His feet dangled past the edge of the bed, way past her own. "Mere, the woman is like a spider, always there in every corner to hear every private conversation, always walking in when the door isn't locked. She's the very definition of the word. Lurk may even be too kind."

"Okay, fine, she lurks," Meredith said. "But she's Izzie! She's almost like my sister at this point. My very judgy, bitchy, nosy, annoying sister." Meredith still couldn't believe what Izzie had done with the urn. And she hadn't had much time that weekend to really calm down about it. Her mind had been on more important things.

Derek shifted, moved his bare foot along her leg. "I have tons of sisters. I don't live with them."

"If they're all like Nancy, I don't exactly blame you," Meredith said with a shudder. "Do you have a point?" she asked, though she had a feeling she knew what it was. 

Derek swallowed. He reached out with his arm, ran his hand down her thigh, his fingers fleeting across her skin as he scooted just an inch closer. She twitched at the sudden flush of goose bumps. The musky smell that was just him, just Derek, coiled around her, and she inhaled as he searched her face with his gaze. "Well, have you thought about… I mean…" His voice trailed off.

"What?" she prodded.

"I was thinking…" he said, almost stuttering, in a very un-Derek-like fashion. "Maybe we could look for something in Seattle, you know, close to Seattle Grace like your mother's house."

For a moment, time just stopped, stopped cold. She couldn't breath, couldn't think, couldn't do anything but blink and make a strange squeaking noise. And then it all slammed back into her in a jumble. "You want to buy a house?" she blurted. "With me?" 

When he'd dropped his cards and gotten right up in her face like that, suddenly gotten so serious, she'd thought he was going to ask her to ask Izzie to go find somewhere else to live, which, really, she couldn't blame him for. Especially not with what Izzie had… just done. Derek was bound to be a little gun-shy around her. And he really did deserve to have some space that was his and his alone, something he didn't really have in such a crowd of roommates and other people, roommates and other people he wasn't even really obligated to in any way. He was their boss, not their friend. But… A house? Derek wanted to buy a… That was a huge commitment. The only thing that would have shocked her more was if he'd proposed.

"Well," he said, clearing his throat, clearing his throat like he was nervous or something. "I was thinking more along the lines of a nice apartment to start with, but if that works out, yeah, Mere. A house."

A strange, giddy feeling started curling up in her stomach, pounding her from the inside out with a thousand butterfly wings, fluttering, but on top of that, a crush of doubt hung there, ominous, heavy. He couldn't have thought this through. He still wasn't… Still wasn't all okay. This was just him reaching for her, reaching for comfort. He hadn't considered the implications.

"But what about your trailer?" she asked. "Your land that you love, you know, the land that you have no idea what you want to do with? The land we're currently residing on?"

"It would still be there, Mere," he said. He rubbed his fingers along her arm and more goose bumps flared at the soft touch. "It could be a weekend place or something."

She frowned, assessing, really assessing him. He didn't **seem** like he was just reaching for her in a panic. "You're serious about this."

"Yeah," he said. "I am."

"That would make it officially official. If we got an apartment, soon to be house. There wouldn't be my place or your place anymore. It would be our place. You really want to do that?" she asked.

"With you, Mere, yes, I want to do that. If you want to."

She stared at him, stared so hard she thought she might peer down into his soul. His gaze was serious, very serious, but at the same time, sparkled over with a confounding amount of amusement, love, other mushy things.

"You're it for me, Mere," he said. "I really want this."

And that was when she finally crumbled. She laughed, launched herself at him. He grunted with the impact, and they rolled, until he was lying on his back underneath her and she had him straddled at the waist between her thighs. She arced down and kissed him.

"Is that a yes?" he said with a chuckle when she came up for air. 

"When do you want to start looking around?" she asked. She laid her cheek flat against his chest, smiling lazily as she listened to his heart beat along with a nice, healthy thump, thump, thump. Officially official. She sat there, twirling her fingers in the little tuft of hair just over his breastbone. Officially official. How about that?

"Well, not right away," he said after a long pause. "I'd kind of… kind of like to make sure I'm keeping my job first."

All her happy thoughts skidded to a stop. She looked up at him, realizing his long pause hadn't exactly been a pleasant one for him. "Derek, you're not losing your job. You're only suspended."

Something shifted behind his gaze, some gear that was supposed to go one way went the other, popped off a track. He swallowed thickly, and his eyes started filling up with unshed tears. When he blinked, she saw the watery film sliding around across the surface of his eyes, almost to the point of overflow. It glistened in the light. "I messed up, Mere," he said, his voice choked. "I'm messed up."

She rubbed his arm, rested against the crook of his neck. "You were obviously sick, Derek. It's not like you decided to do what you did on a whim. And the Chief said he was just suspending you."

He shook his head, staring up at the ceiling. "Chief Webber isn't the only one who can make those decisions, Mere. And if Dr. Wyatt really decides to make an issue of it…"

"But what Izzie did with Denny was so much worse…"

"What Izzie did wasn't on the record. According to Seattle Grace, it didn't happen. Mere, Dr. Wyatt could sue me for personal injury… He could file for harassment with the hospital's HR department… And, god, I could get hit with a malpractice lawsuit if what happened gets out to Julie Walters's family. Do you think Seattle Grace would want to hold onto a walking liability like that?"

The overflow that had been threatening finally happened, and he was crying, crying on her. His mood had shifted in the space of time it took to fire a gunshot, and she hadn't been prepared for it. One moment they'd been happy, and the next he was in agony underneath her. Fear slipped under her skin, cold and shivery. He'd been doing so well, so well all day, and now he wasn't. The change was so unexpected that uncertainty slammed into her like a linebacker on steroids, and she was mentally stumbling, trying to find words, but unsure of what he needed to hear, what she needed to say.

"But Derek, you didn't have anything to do with Julie's death. You can't get sued for malpractice!" she insisted, trying to reassure him. "If anything, Dr. Wyatt is the one who should be worried."

Her assurances didn't help. He shook his head, reached up and clutched his face with his hands. "I was in the room when she died, Mere, doing a complex medical procedure that happened to occur at the same time. And, very shortly after, I went off the deep end. No lawyer is going to care that I didn't do anything wrong if the family wants blood for blood and they're willing to pay for it."

"Derek…"

"No, Mere, no," he gasped. "I really did it. And it's my fault. I can't believe… Can't believe I let it get that bad." And then he laughed, long and hard and breaking like fine china hitting the floor. "Look at me," he said, choking on the words. "I can't even have a normal conversation anymore without falling apart."

She sighed, pulling his hands back from his face, placing her own there, flat against his temples, forcing him to look at her. "It's not your fault. This isn't a normal conversation. And you're not falling apart."

He chuckled wryly at her, sniffling. He reached up and gripped her wrists. "You don't call this falling apart?"

"No, I call it letting go," she said. "Derek, you need to get this stuff out of you. You're letting it fester and twist, and it's not good for you, especially right now when all of your barriers are still mending. Believe me, I know."

He sucked in a heaving breath, his whole body shifting underneath her. She gripped him tightly, rode the wave. He quivered in a moment of uncertainty, and then he released her wrists, shifted his grip up her arms, his skin sliding along her own, tension mounting like a spring coil. He rolled them. Poker chips clinked and went spilling everywhere as they moved. Cards stuck to her back, went cascading. Little popcorn pieces poked her. He was on top of her, crouching over her, panting, crying, and she lay there, open to him, trusting, silent. He looked at her like she was the only thing left in the world.

"I hate this," he said.

"Tell me, Derek."

"I feel so out of control…" he said. "I don't even know what will set me off anymore, and I can't stop it when it does. I'm like a leaky faucet, for crying out loud. Do you have any idea how embarrassing this is for me? I don't have any idea how I'm going to make it through work on Monday." 

"So don't go to work on Monday. Take some time off, Derek. If you need it. You need to worry about you right now, not how other people see you."

"Taking off feels like I'm giving in." 

"And not giving in, not admitting that you had a problem is what got you here in the first place, Derek."

At those words, he crumpled. He flopped over onto his side, his back turned toward her, and she heard him weeping. His shoulders shook, shifting in tiny movements almost mistakable for stillness. She rolled over and spooned him. "Things will be okay," she said. She rubbed her hand up and down his side, giving him contact, letting him let it all out in silence, not prodding, not poking, just supporting.

Eventually, his upset settled into quiet, hitched breathing, and then slipped away like a burglar on cat feet, taking his confidence, taking the carefree expression he'd touted at their poker showdown, leaving him still and slightly broken again. He sniffed. "Thanks," he said, his voice low and thick and rough.

"You're it for me too, Derek," she said. "You'll be okay."

He turned to her, rubbed his face with his hands, looked at her with raw, red eyes. "When did you get to be so strong?" he asked.

"My knight in shining whatever needed some help."

He snorted. "I think at this point I'm more the pointless sidekick that keeps getting into trouble just to forward the plot." 

"Holy scalpels, Batman, I've just gotten a scary image of you in tights."

He frowned. "That hurts, Mere. It does."

"You sure look great with nothing on at all, though," she said with a sly grin.

"Nice save." 

"Thanks!" And then she broke into a fit of giggles that had her gasping, twitching, uncontrollable and unstoppable.

"We're back to the wounding, Mere." 

"Sorry," she whispered, unable to draw enough breath to make the word solid.

He shuffled. And suddenly a pillow was slamming into her face, nothing gentle about it.

"Hey!" she shrieked as he hovered over her with an evil grin. She was on her feet in moments. She dodged another blow as she went diving for her own ammunition, but he was already off at a run. The door slammed.

"You cheat!" she said, and she took off after him.

She didn't really stop to think about how they looked… her in her t-shirt, no pants, him in boxers and one sock. It didn't really matter.


	19. Chapter 19

"So, how are you, Meredith?" Cristina asked.

Meredith gripped her cell phone to her ear. She sat on the deck outside of Derek's trailer. The morning was damp and cool and gray, not unlike many Seattle mornings. She inhaled the chill of the air, letting it wake her, letting it prod her to life as she sat there in jeans and a light windbreaker, sipping on a cup of steaming coffee. Her friends, having left her alone for two blissful days, seemed to have decided that three days was the cut-off for communication blackouts. George had phoned an hour ago to make sure everything was fine. Even Alex had called to check in, although it had been a fairly quick, monosyllabic conversation. The only person who had not yet graced her phone's tinny-sounding little speakers was Izzie, which Meredith didn't really find herself surprised about.

Derek's phone had also rung off the hook that morning. Addison. Again, and again, and again. He'd put the phone on vibrate after the second call, but then it had proceeded to rumble its way off the table until he'd finally given up and just turned it off. Addison had been briefly out of town on some sort of consult with a hospital in San Francisco. Apparently, she was back, back and clued in on the mountain of gossip most likely circulating the hallways of Seattle Grace. 

Meredith swallowed, wondering suddenly how bad it would be on Monday morning when she went in for her shift.

"I'm fine, Cristina," Meredith said, taking a sip of her coffee. The heat curled down her throat, relaxing her, stopping the onset of worries. Caffeine was a glorious invention. "And Derek is… better." 

"Better as in not nuts?" Cristina asked. "Or better as in actually sane?" 

"Cristina…" Meredith sighed. "He's having a hard time right now." She knew Cristina meant well, but she just couldn't take the snark right then. 

"Sorry," Cristina whispered, contrite, and with that one word, it was all okay again. "Burke wants to know if you two want to come over for dinner tonight. I think he's making… some sort of bird." 

"Turkey?"

A bluster of shuffling noises made Meredith pull her phone away from her ear and wince. "Could be," Cristina said after a long pause.

"Cristina," Meredith said. "You should let him teach you what food is, at least, even if you're not going to cook it." 

"Where would the mystery be, then?"

"Well…" 

"So, are you two good to come over?"

Meredith shrugged. Derek had been doing pretty well. The pillow fight the night before had ended in a draw when they'd gone tumbling into the cold wet grass in a bursting cloud of down feathers. They'd laughed and panted and kissed. After they'd gone back inside, had some coffee to warm up, and finished picking feathers from their hair, they'd had lots and lots of great sex. Great sex. Unreal sex. Fantastic, stupendous, astounding sex. The whole evening had been surreal. Derek had been happy. Happy, glowing, forgetful of everything happening outside their lust-filled bubble for the whole night. And this morning, the mood had continued, continued until breakfast when their phones had started ringing off the hook. Annoying as it was being reminded that a world outside of Derek's trailer did indeed exist, it had at least gotten them moving that morning. And Derek had suggested that they go home that day. As soon as he finished up with his shower, that was the working plan. But going home versus actively socializing… Those activities were in two different leagues from each other.

"I'll check with Derek and get back to you, okay? I don't know if he's up for it." 

"Sure, Mere. Just let me know soon, or Burke will get testy about his kitchen schedule. Something about it taking time to baste… I think."

Meredith chuckled, picturing Cristina sitting there on the counter staring cluelessly while Burke meticulously operated on a turkey. "Okay, Cristina."

She hung up the phone as the door slammed and Derek came out of the trailer. "Hey," she said. The sight of him, hair still wet and slick as he stood in tight, faded jeans, and a maroon t-shirt, also tight and faded… It took her breath away.

He smiled. "Okay, I'm ready. Who was that?" 

"Cristina," Meredith said. "She wants to know if we want to do dinner tonight with her and Burke at their apartment."

He didn't answer for a long, long moment, enough that she thought he might be trying to figure out a tactful way to say no, and she found herself babbling, "If you're not ready, it's fine, Derek. You don't need to be ready." 

"No," he said. He shook his head. "No, we can go."

Meredith raised an eyebrow and stood. "You're sure?" she asked as she walked over and wrapped her arms around him.

He kissed her. When he pulled back, he smiled. "We'll call it a litmus test." 

"I thought going back to my house was the litmus test…"

He shrugged. "I'll be all right, Mere. I have to rejoin the world at some point. I'd rather try it with friends first than at work tomorrow."

Seeing his resolve, Meredith nodded. "I'll call her back when we get home then."

Derek ran his hands over her head, combing her hair back as he smiled at her. "So, are you set?" 

"Yep," she answered.

They walked over to the car, slow and relaxed, breathing in the air, not rushing, not infected with the need to get anywhere fast. It was nice. Derek walked around to the driver's side, leaving her to get in on the passenger side. She smiled as he pulled out his car keys and sat down behind the steering wheel without comment. Meredith smiled again as he started to adjust the mirrors and the seat to his own preferences.

He turned to her, and she felt like she'd been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. Blush spread across her face as he grinned back at her. "What?" he asked.

"You're driving," she replied.

He smiled, though he was obviously flustered by her attention. "Yes. Yes, I am," he said. He waggled his eyebrows at her as turned the key in the ignition, and after the car rumbled to life, he backed out onto the drive that led up to the trailer from the main road. He checked the rearview mirror as he wheeled the car around and then glanced at her. She was still watching, still smiling. He braked. "Did you want to drive? Am I missing something important here? I feel like I'm missing something." 

"No, I'm just…" she said, searching for any sort of word that might describe everything going through her head right then. Nothing came close. She settled for the generic, "Happy."

He laughed. "Okay..." 

"Go ahead," she said.

He seemed to shake it off as just one of those crazy things he would never ever figure out, and soon, they were moving forward again. She watched him in silence as he navigated the backstreets of Bainbridge. He was driving. Why was she so amazed that he was driving? It'd just been so long. So long since she hadn't been sitting there behind the wheel while he sat in a daze next to her, tired, off in his own world.

She was so deep in thought that she didn't really notice where they were until the gray of the sky overhead dimmed and they pulled into a dark, covered area behind a slow-moving line of cars.

"The ferry, Derek?" she asked as they plunged further into the cavernous space.

He shrugged. "This is my last day off. I can live for a thirty-five minute ferry trip if it saves me an hour and a half that could be used for more interesting things."

"You're sure," she said. 

"I want extra time for sex, Mere," he replied with a grin. "Believe me, I'm sure."

She leaned across the parking brake, into his shoulder. "If I'd known deprivation made you so daring, I would have tried that earlier."

He turned, eyes inches from hers. "Spill your guts or no sex?" 

"Something like that."

He frowned. "But that would have been mean… I might have gone crazy anyway. It's intense, this thing I have for you."

She moved closer, just an inch. "Oh, is it?" 

"Oh, yes," he said, his voice dropping into a low, husky tone that vibrated against her, curled down her spine, started the first, throbbing hint of arousal. 

She shifted closer, wrapping her arms around his neck. "On a scale of one to ten…" she whispered as she leaned in to kiss his jaw line. "How bad is it?" 

"Twenty-seven," he replied.

She stopped her downward trail and pulled up. "Really?" 

"Yes," he said. "Now, stop quantifying and start kissing me so I don't have time to think about where we are."

By the time they pulled into the ferry port on the Seattle side of the Sound, they were both blushing and panting and dazed. She called Cristina once they'd gotten off the ferry and told her they would be there for dinner that night, only sort of able to maintain a coherent conversation as Derek kept giving her deep, lascivious looks that described to her better than words ever could what he wanted to do with her clothes, and what he wanted to do with her.

"He's having eye sex with you, isn't he," Cristina had said, disgusted. "Well, I'll leave you to it." And then the conversation had ended.

Derek drove them home, but every stop light, every time the car wasn't moving, he was staring at her, staring at her with a burning need in his eyes that made her want to collapse and let him take her right there. The sexual tension coiled in the air like a thick, twisting piece of rope. It wrapped around her limbs, her lower body, everywhere, and it pulled, and writhed, and left her plastered up against the opposite door of the car cabin, hoping that soon, sometime soon, the car would stop, and she would be free to pounce on him. She felt like she had when he'd been driving her home from the hospital just over three weeks ago, when the lust had gotten so ridiculously pent up and tortured that they'd ended up attacking each other within feet of the doorway as soon as they'd gotten home.

Derek pulled into the driveway, and Meredith was already out the door, running for the house, laughing, giggling, when she noticed Derek hadn't followed. He stood there at the driver's side door, his hand on the lock button of his keychain, staring out onto the street. Meredith turned around, curious over what had gotten his attention.

"What's that doing here?" he asked. Mark's cherry-colored Spyder sat parallel parked across the street behind a neighbor's beat up Camry.

Meredith shrugged. "I… don't know?"

The arousal that had built bled out of her as Derek turned to her, his eyes awash with turmoil, doubt, and other ugly things that hadn't been there only moments ago. They walked up to the house, tension stretching between them like a tightened violin string. His skin had already gone a shade paler since he'd found the car, and Meredith swallowed with worry. "Maybe we should just come back later?" she said. She really didn't want Derek to run into Mark right now. She really didn't. Not if just seeing his car was making him act this strange.

But Derek fumbled with his keys, fumbled with shaking hands. Finally, he got the right one and plowed ahead, only to stop short just inside the foyer, sudden, so abrupt that Meredith slammed right into his back. "Hey," she grunted. She caught herself on his shirt. He wobbled.

"What are you doing here?" Derek snapped.

"Dr. Shepherd!" Izzie squeaked. "We didn't know you were coming home today…"

"Derek," Mark's unmistakable voice said.

Meredith came around to Derek's side, giving herself a view of the situation. Mark stood there in his boxers in the doorway to the kitchen. Izzie was coming down the steps, her hair mussed into a nest of snarling blond, eyes bleary, and she was still in her sleep shorts and a shirt.

"Adding more tick marks to your list of lays?" Derek said, his voice dripping with surprise and disgust. "Get out, Mark." He gestured toward the door.

Mark didn't grant them an expression. "I didn't sleep with anyone…"

Derek snorted. "Get out, Mark. I don't want you here. I don't want--" his voice trailed away, the last word breaking, just a little, like cracking glass that wasn't quite shattered-through yet. He swallowed, thick and loud.

Izzie seemed a little more disturbed than Mark was by this encounter. "Are you kidding me? We just drank too much because we were worrying about you. There was no sex." She stumbled her way down the steps, gripping the railing tightly, apparently not all together yet from waking up. 

"Relax, Derek," Mark said, his tone low, rumbling, soothing, like someone talking to a wild animal that was threatening to charge. "I was going to leave after I'd finished my coffee…"

"What?" Izzie said. "He's not leaving! Nobody's leaving. God. This isn't a pissing match. Can we talk like rational adults?" 

"No, you're leaving right now. Not after coffee. Right now," Derek said, ignoring Izzie entirely. He stepped aside to give the boxer-clad Mark a clear path.

Anger and hostility and tension and all sorts of badness hung in the air like a tempest, just waiting to whirl away anyone who dared to step into it. Red faces, tempers, and flashing eyes formed a triangle at the entrances to the foyer. Fury coiled, coiled, coiled. 

"Would everyone just shut up!" Meredith yelled, her voice breaking through the sudden well of testosterone and other hormones raging in the air.

Three pairs of eyes turned to her. Derek looked like he was a thread shy of snapping. His eyes had a panicked, watery look to them. His posture held his frame in a rigid line of bones and limbs as he breathed in and out in short, short gasps as though he were just short of either exploding in a fit of temper, or breaking down in tears. 

"Izzie, Mark, why don't you go into the kitchen and do… whatever," she said. "Derek and I are going upstairs."

She pulled on Derek's sleeve, pulled lightly. For a moment, it didn't look like he was going to budge. And then he acquiesced, followed her mutely past Izzie, who still stood dumbstruck at the base of the stairs. Meredith didn't turn around to see if they were following her instructions. All she knew was that she had to get Derek away, or something really bad was going to happen. And so she was getting him away. Away, away, away.

When she closed the bedroom door behind them, he walked slowly over to the bed and collapsed. The tension leaked out of his frame and he curled over, put his face in his hands. "Mere, I can't do this... I can't be here. When he's here. I can't… It's Mark, Mere. Please. I can deal with Izzie, for you, but I can't… I don't want him here, not now, not when I'm… Like this." He started to shake.

She sat next to him and rubbed her palm along his back, up and down the curve of his spine as he started to suck in tortured, racking breaths. "Derek, it's okay. Just calm down. Breathe. Shhh. I'm going to go talk to them in a minute. Why don't you lie down while I do that?"

He pulled himself together. A little. "Okay," he said. "Okay." He swallowed once, twice, and when he looked up, he looked better. His eyes were red, and his gaze looked a little wild, a little frenzied. But nothing imminent lingered there, ready to escape. He hung in an oasis, an oasis between all the nastiness.

She stood up as he settled himself onto his back, flat, and stared at the ceiling. "Will you be okay? I'll be right back, I promise," she said.

He nodded, mute. He heaved a huge sigh, and his breathing slowed into a pace that resembled calm. He folded his arms under his head and just lay there, staring up at nothing in particular.

Meredith frowned. "I love you," she said, and then she pushed the door shut.

She went back downstairs. Izzie and Mark sat talking in hushed tones at the kitchen table, still in the same state of undress as before. They looked up at her as she entered the room. Mugs of fresh coffee sat in front of them. Steam curled up from the cups in lazy, winding trails. In the relative calm, Meredith finally registered how awful the both of them looked. Bloodshot eyes, pale skin, a pasty, sweaty look to each of them. They were hungover, all right.

"Mark, Izzie," Meredith said. "I don't know what you two were doing. I don't really care. But Mark needs to leave. Right now."

"Meredith…" Izzie said.

Meredith crossed her arms over her chest. "No, Izzie. You don't get to talk right now. This is my house. And Mark can't be here." 

"This is unbelievable," Izzie muttered.

"Izzie!" Meredith snapped. Both Mark and Izzie winced in unison.

Mark stood, pushing back from the table, slow, and deliberate, as if every sinew ached. "No," he said. "No, Izzie, it's all right." He turned to Meredith. "Look, I need to run upstairs to grab my clothes from the guest bedroom. But then I'll be out of here." He shuffled past Meredith. Thumps followed shortly as his bare feet struck the steps. He padded up and disappeared out of hearing range.

Izzie pushed back from the table in her chair and stood in a shot. "How could you do that, Meredith? We were just talking. We talked through about two bottles of whiskey. I didn't want him to drive. That's all that happened." 

"Izzie, stop. Just stop," Meredith snapped. "I told you, I don't care. I don't care what you were doing. Frankly, it's none of my business. This has nothing to do with that. This has to do with the fact that Derek doesn't play well with Mark anymore. Derek's doing okay, Izzie. But only just. Your little stunt broke him, really, really broke him. And he just can't handle Mark right now. Okay? Will you please just understand for once, stop judging, and let it go? Please, Izzie."

Izzie crumpled. "I'm sorry, Meredith. I'm so sorry. What I did—"

Meredith didn't let her finish. "Was horrifying, Izzie. What right did you have to drag our business out of the closet and in front of the whole hospital for everyone to see? What right did you have? What right, Izzie? Do you have any idea what these last few days have been like for me? For Derek? He might lose his job…" 

Izzie looked at the floor, and Meredith felt the subtle pricks of tears as they began to water up in her eyes. She sucked in a breath and blinked. She was not going to cry right now.

"I told her it would probably work. It's partially my fault," Mark said from behind her. Meredith whipped around, surprised that she hadn't heard him returning. He stood, leaning on the doorframe, jeans and t-shirt clad, arms crossed, displaying his rather significant biceps. He had a briefcase over his shoulder. He shrugged. "He usually responds if you call him on his shit. Sometimes he just needs a good knock on the head." 

Meredith's jaw dropped before she could stop it, and the fury dripped out of her from an inner well she hadn't realized she'd been harboring. It just poured, and poured, and poured, like a flashflood, ugly, twisted from within, collecting until it overwhelmed her, spilled from her and unfurled.

"A good knock on the head! You just don't get it, do you, Mark?" Meredith snapped. "You don't know him anymore! You want the Derek that lived in Manhattan with you, but he's gone. You broke that one. And now you're breaking the one that lives in Seattle all over again. Just leave him be, Mark. For god's sake. Leave him alone. He doesn't want your help."

Mark blinked and took a small step backward, looking at her like she'd slapped him, for once showing an expression other than that arrogant smirk. Like a pricked balloon, he deflated, and his shoulders curled. His jaw line bulged and receded as he clenched and unclenched his teeth. His hands were suddenly in fists.

Meredith realized she'd really gotten to him that time, really struck a nerve. She saw through the mask, the snarky, sarcastic, unfeeling womanizer he pretended to be, and she saw that she'd dug her claws in deep that time, deep enough for him to feel it. But she didn't let herself feel bad. Not for this.

"Okay," Mark said after a long, intervening silence, his voice rough and disturbed. For a moment, he paused, his eyes darting between Meredith and Izzie. Then he turned to leave. "Thanks for the chat, Izzie. As you can see, I'm light on friends," he said. And then he walked out through the front door. Within moments, the sound of his Spyder purring to life filtered through the air, and it receded into the distance as he drove away.

Meredith turned back to Izzie, who stood there, tears streaking her face. Her eyes were bloodshot, and paleness hugged her skin, which was only blotched where tears were streaked. The rest was flat and white and alabaster. Her hair sprayed out in utter disarray, and she looked miserable. But Meredith didn't let that get to her either. There were things, things that had to be said. And they needed to be said then. Right then.

"Izzie, there's going to be some new rules," she said, swallowing against the thick crush of emotions churning within her. "I never really did this before. I never really needed to. But now, I do. And I'm sorry if this makes me a Nazi landlord, or whatever, but rules are a thing that we need. A big thing. Seriously."

"What?" Izzie said, sniffling.

Meredith plowed onward. She raised her index finger. "First, if my bedroom door is shut, you don't go in. I don't care if it's locked or not. No more barging in. And no more hovering outside. My bedroom is not your personal walk space."

"Okay," Izzie said.

Meredith ticked off the second point on her middle finger. "Second, if you're going to get all buddy-buddy with Mark, fine, but don't bring it back here. Mark lives somewhere. Go there."

"Okay."

Meredith's ring finger went up. "Third, stop crying. Because you're making me want to cry. And crying sucks. I've done enough of it already."

"Okay," Izzie said. She brushed her cheeks, leaving red streaks behind. "I'm really sorry, Meredith," she said again. "I really, really am. I should have realized that Dr. Shepherd might get a page… or something. I'm… I'm just sorry."

"I can't forgive you this, Izzie. I just can't. Not when…" her voice trailed off as she thought of Derek, lying upstairs, trying to calm down, trying to feel at home, trying not to have a nervous breakdown in what was supposed to be his own home, and her heart broke.

This house, she was going to have to let go of it, let go of living here. She didn't want to sell it. No, she would keep renting it out. But she and Derek… They did need to get their own place. Away from other people. Away from all the Grey family memories. It wasn't just some neat, cool thing to make everything officially official, no matter how happy it made her that he'd asked. They really needed it, needed to build something on their own, needed their own place to create new memories in. She'd never realized how much they'd needed it before.

She blinked, coming back from her thoughts to the sound of Izzie's voice. "Are you okay, Meredith?" 

"I'm fine," she answered automatically.

Izzie quirked an eyebrow at her.

"Okay," Meredith said. "I've been better."

Izzie sat back down in her chair and gestured to the seat across from her. The seat where Mark had sat. "Want to tell me?" she asked.

Meredith sat and collapsed her head onto her hands with a sigh. "It's just hard, Izzie. It's hard to be the strong one. I'm not used to it." 

"It looks so good on you, though." 

"What?" 

"The take-charge thing. You're so much less mopey." 

Meredith laughed despite the overwhelming upset she felt at that moment. "Thanks, I think."

Izzie smiled back. "You should probably go back upstairs."

"I probably should," Meredith said.

But neither of them got up. They sat in companionable silence for several minutes, until Izzie finally broke it. "How is he? How is he, really? Do you need to talk to someone about it?" 

"He's better," Meredith replied.

"But?"

She shook her head. "I keep feeling like I'm trying to glue a broken statue back together. It's like I'm never going to get all the pieces back. No matter how vigilant I am. Some of it is just dust. And that scares me, Izzie. It does. I'm really scared." And it scared her that she was the one who had broken him. But she didn't say it. Couldn't say it. Izzie didn't know… and Meredith had no desire to tell.

Izzie stood, came around to Meredith's chair, and pulled her into a warm, enveloping hug. "Meredith, there will always be things that make me cry over Denny, always. I can't even pull that stupid sweater I knitted for him out of my drawer without going into hysterics. The grief will always be there. You can't fix everything. But sometimes we need the pain to remind us of all the good things. I think Dr. Shepherd's lucky to have you there for him. He'll probably always have moments where he thinks about the ferry accident. But he'll be all right. Just give it some time." 

"Thanks, Izzie," Meredith said.

Izzie sniffled. "I'm sorry, I think I've already broken rule three." 

"It's okay." 

"I'll try… try to stay out of your way from now on," Izzie said.

Meredith nodded, pulling away. "It's good that you care, Izzie. Just…" 

"Tone it down?" 

"To put it lightly."

Izzie nodded. Meredith turned to go, and Izzie started rummaging through the fridge. "You know, alcohol sucks. All I see in here is stuff that would make me vomit in new and interesting ways," Izzie announced.

Meredith laughed. She'd been there. "Start with something like cereal before you go crazy with the eating thing," she called behind her as she thumped up the steps.

She returned to the bedroom, pushing the door open quietly. Derek lay there, almost exactly as she'd left him, except his eyes were closed.

"Derek," she whispered. "You asleep?"

His eyelids slipped open and he looked at her. She sat down next to him and rubbed his arm. "Mark's gone," she said. "And Izzie will not be barging in on us anymore under threat of death."

He sighed, reached up, and ran his hands through his hair. "Thanks. I kind of went a little crazy again, didn't I?" he asked.

"It's not crazy to want to be alone in your own house, Derek. I'm sorry I never really gave you the priority you needed in that respect."

"It's not like I ever said anything, Mere. It's not your fault."

"So," she said as she swung her leg over his hip and straddled him. "We have… let's see…" She lifted his wrist and glanced at his watch. "Hours to kill. What would you like to do?" 

He raised an eyebrow, but didn't move beneath her. "Save a horse, ride a surgeon?"

She gasped and swatted him. "Derek!"

She was reduced to giggles as he snaked his wristwatch hand behind her and pulled her down on top of him.


	20. Chapter 20

**Author's Notes: Thanks everyone for the continued reviews and support :) I'm loosely predicting that this story will be around 25-26 parts now. I've written up to part 23, and things are starting to wrap up. I hope you all continue to enjoy!  
**

* * *

Dinner had been uneventful, but delicious. Derek, Meredith, Cristina, and Preston had devoured the roasted turkey and a swath of side dishes, from real mashed potatoes, to the spiciest, most unusual stuffing Derek had ever tried. Or rather, Derek had done the devouring. He'd eaten, eaten, eaten, until he'd been so stuffed he could barely think straight. He felt like he was at a five star restaurant, or perhaps back at home when his grandmother had still been alive, still been the fantastic chef of the house. For the first time in weeks, he'd downed a meal and downed it to excess, relishing the taste of everything as it slid down his throat and settled. All while Meredith had watched him shovel stuff off his plate with a look of quiet, smiling amazement.

Everyone had conversed under a thick, hovering cloud of small talk, small talk that had poked and picked and prodded at little things like the weather, traffic, television shows, current events, various things that didn't touch Seattle Grace at all. Derek hadn't minded that it was all obviously engineered. He hadn't minded that Meredith had probably given them rules beforehand, or something like that. He had just relished the lack of questions, the lack of staring. He'd chipped in to the conversation when he'd had a thought to include. He'd stayed silent and eaten the mouth-watering food when he didn't. And nobody had bugged him or tried to push him.

The growing sense of ease and the constant flow of the best Pinot Noir he'd had in years all combined to relax him into a happy, dull, carefree state that, before that night, he'd thought might never return outside of private time with Meredith. It was such a relief, such an overwhelming relief, that after the meal, he'd pulled Meredith into his arms as he'd bubbled over with delight and kissed her in front of everyone, kissed her so fully that Cristina had started making choking noises, and finally they'd had to stop or risk throwing down on the floor right there, regardless of the audience.

The only problem with the whole of the night had been that with all the careful avoidance of anything that could be considered an issue, he had been introduced to a slow-building, burgeoning, intense curiosity about what horrible things had happened at the hospital since Meredith had dragged him home last Thursday. After Meredith and Cristina had paired off and gone to sit in the bedroom for private girl chat, Derek and Burke had sat down in the living room, sprawling themselves out on the couches. After more of the same small talk from dinner for several minutes, Burke offered to mix up drinks, and after a few more moments, Derek had a double scotch, single malt sitting on the coaster in front of him in a small crystal glass. By then, the buzz of alcohol from dinner had begun to wear off a little, the effervescence of discovering that he could eat and enjoy it again had begun to simmer down by fractions, and the fullness in his stomach drugged him into a tired state where the curiosity was left with free thoughts in which to bloom.

Derek blinked, peeled away from his spiraling thoughts as Burke poured himself some of the leftover Pinot Noir from dinner, and the sloshing noise filled the silence. Derek watched the trail of red liquid as it leaked from the dark green bottle, watched, and couldn't stand the curiosity any more as it burbled over into words.

"Have you…" He stopped, cleared his throat of the lodging discomfort. "Have you heard anything… About Dr. Wyatt?" Derek asked.

Burke took a sip of the wine, rolled it on his tongue. "He's being disciplined," he answered. "And his attending, I think Dr. Zachary, is getting an earful for not properly overseeing procedures done by his residents. Beyond that…" A shrug rolled off Burke's shoulders.

Derek sighed, leaned forward, and asked, "How bad is it?"

Burke shrugged again, his voice low, and soothing, and smooth as he said, "I doubt it's as bad as you're imagining. You'll probably have to present at this month's M&M, though."

A spear of unease slipped unhindered through Derek's chest, and his breath stopped, just for a moment. "Isn't that in less than two weeks?" he asked after he downed his first burning swallow of scotch. Two weeks. He didn't know if he could get up in front of the whole hospital in just two weeks. He'd barely wanted to come to dinner in the first place, though, at least he'd been pleasantly surprised at how well he'd done so far. But getting up in front of all the people who'd seen him, watched him as he'd proceeded to crack and break and turn into something barely functional, barely resembling what he'd been before… Questions, they would ask him questions, about the situation, questions that would bring him screaming back to the state of mind he'd been trying so hard to leave behind him. 

"Yes," Burke said. "I'm sure the Chief will talk to you about it."

"Okay," Derek replied. He took another sip of scotch, let it muzz him up a little. He arrived back into the realm of pleasantly buzzed and tried to savor it. He ran his hands through his hair and took a deep, cleansing breath. "Okay."

Burke leaned forward, propped his hands on his knees as if he were about to stand up, but he stayed there, hovered in that tense posture. "You'll let me know if you need help?" 

"Yeah," Derek said. He put his scotch down. It clinked on the ceramic coaster. "Yeah…"

"Do you need…" Burke swallowed. "Anything else?"

Derek shook his head, forced himself to breathe, and breathe again, to calm down. His heart had started to thump, thump, thump so loudly he could feel it. But it slowed when he thought about it, tried to think about relaxing, tried to think slow, easy thoughts. He would worry about the M&M and the state of his job on some other night, some other night when he wasn't trying so hard to move forward with things.

"I think I just need to stop thinking about it," he said.

"Okay," Burke said. He relaxed back into his seat, and changed the subject so abruptly that Derek took a moment to register the new topic. "So, Cristina and I are trying to set a date."

Derek blinked. He'd forgotten, almost completely forgotten, that the two were even engaged. They didn't do anything to advertise it. Burke wasn't usually inclined to talk about his personal life that much, and Cristina didn't really talk to Derek at all unless it was work-related.

"Oh?" Derek said. Be social, he told himself as he tried to shove his earlier unsettled panic away. Talk about things. It's what you do with friends. "When are you thinking?"

Burke ran his hands up over his head and leaned back against the sofa. "Sometime next spring is what we've narrowed it down to. I think."

"If you need help, let me know," Derek offered. "I've been there before."

"I remember," Burke said, and an awkward silence fell between them, as though Burke didn't feel he had the right to pry about Addison, even when Derek was the one that brought her up, albeit indirectly. "Want another?" Burke gestured to Derek's half-finished scotch after a long silence.

"Not yet," Derek replied. "I'm still nursing this one." He picked it up and took another burning, scorching sip. It piled down his throat and churned in his stomach with the rest of the food. Derek blinked against the muzzy, sharp blur of coloring things were starting to get.

When Meredith let out a particularly loud giggle, Burke cleared his throat. "Shall we see what the girls are up to?"

Derek shrugged, his tongue probably a little looser than it should have been. "Probably just talking about sex. They're worse than men, you know, when they congregate," he said and leaned back to look at the ceiling.

Burke raised an eyebrow. "I won't tell Meredith you said that."

"Good. Because I'd like to have more sex in the future." Derek coughed, the burning feeling in his throat from his last swallow of scotch cut deep, and it was slowly receding into nothingness as the moments progressed. "You know, to broaden her choice of conversation topics."

"Right. Um." Burke cleared his throat. "When Cristina goes over to your place… Is that really what they talk about?"

Derek shrugged. "Who knows for sure? I usually get sent to the kitchen when Cristina shows up. Unless they want to talk in the kitchen. Then I get sent to the bedroom."

"Oh." Burke took a long sip of his Pinot Noir before placing the crystal glass back on a coaster on the coffee table. It clinked, and the red wine sloshed before resettling.

"Why?" Derek asked.

"I was going to make sure I'm not getting any bad press."

"She's marrying you. I doubt you need to worry."

"She's so closed off, sometimes I have to wonder," Burke replied, his voice dripping with a sudden bitterness. "And the reason we haven't set a firm date is because she won't pick one."

Derek swallowed, realizing that Burke was extending an unusual amount of confidence toward him. He inhaled, quick and fast, wondering if this conversation was headed in a direction he wasn't ready to handle just yet.

"Have you asked her why she won't pick one?" Derek asked.

"I've asked her if she's picked one every time I feel like I can without getting snapped at."

"But have you asked her why?" Derek prodded.

"No," Burke replied, and looked back with a gaze that asked, pleaded for advice, even if he wasn't coming right out and asking for it with words.

Derek closed his eyes, letting older, safer memories flood his brain, erasing the newer volatile ones. He smiled as he remembered popping the question to Addison. He'd been a nervous wreck leading up to it, nervous and bubbling with too many syllables. Addison had wondered what the hell was wrong with him, kept asking him what was up, until he'd finally just blabbed the question by accident, well before his special, planned moment.

"When Addison and I got engaged, we had some similar stumbling blocks. We were both nervous," Derek said.

Burke shook his head. "You shouldn't be nervous about getting married. If you want it, you want it."

"Not everyone works that way."

"And how do you think they work?"

"Marriage is a big thing. A huge thing," Derek said. "Some people spend a little time wondering if they're making a mistake first before they take the plunge."

"You wondered?"

"Yes. Addison too."

"But you…" Burke swallowed.

"I brought her up, Preston. You can say what you want to say," Derek replied.

"You ended in a divorce," Burke said. He raised his eyebrows, a helpless gaze overwhelming his normally confident features. "Are you sure you should be giving me advice?"

Derek sighed. It was a valid question, he supposed. "Look," Derek said. "I do regret the time I wasted trying to fix things after Mark happened. I do regret that. But I don't regret my marriage to Addison. I did love her. Not the same way I love Mere now, but at the time, it was the best kind of love I knew."

Derek closed his eyes. It had been true. When he'd been in love with Addison, he really had been in love. It hadn't been some fake thing, some wrong thing, some ugly thing to forget. It'd been a beautiful thing. He had honestly loved her. Just differently. It hadn't been the kind of all-consuming fire he had for Meredith, the kind that sometimes threatened to incinerate him, but back then, back when he and Addison had been together, he hadn't known such a thing existed. He'd thought that was what you got when you read a trashy dime-store romance novel. He had believed that there was a perfect person for everyone to spend his or her life with, but he hadn't realized that such consuming passion was even possible. What he'd felt with Addison had been slower to build, subtler, blossoming over a few years of prior friendship rather than with the swipe strike of a match at a bar when he'd seen Meredith smile. He supposed it had been safer, safer maybe to be with Addison. But safe and subtle didn't really mean there was any less love to go around. He had been lucky to have her when he'd had her. But, over time… Their feelings just hadn't been enough to overwhelm the flow of their lives, the flow that'd made them drift apart.

He tipped back his scotch and took another swig.

"So even after all that's happened this year," Burke asked. "You don't think you made a mistake?"

Derek shrugged. "The only mistake I made with Addison was not signing the divorce papers the first time around. I had a moment of indecision, and I balked in the wrong direction. The rest… We just… fell out of love, which happens sometimes. And we were both too stubborn to admit it. Look, I guess, if I have a point, it would be that… well… You love Cristina now, right?"

"Yes."

"And she loves you?"

Burke frowned. "Usually, I think so."

"Then it won't be a mistake, no matter who's worried and who isn't," Derek said. "Just talk to her. I'm learning more and more that the now is what's important."

"Are you going to ask Meredith?"

Derek froze at the question. This. This was the direction he'd been hoping the conversation wouldn't go. His muscles tightened. "To marry me?" he asked, stalling, staling for time to compose himself.

"Yes."

"Yes," Derek said. "Just not now."

He tilted back his scotch again, sucking the glass dry. The healthy buzz he'd acquired continued, just enough to make his emotions looser than they should have been, and this conversation was far from good to be having when he was like that. He blinked, blinked away the mushy, swirly room. His eyes watered with the burn of the last swallow of alcohol, and Burke sat staring at him, contemplating him. He could do this. He could get through this discussion. Act like somebody normal.

"After all the things you just told me," Burke said, "You're not going to ask her now?"

"I—" Derek stuttered, his voice coming to a stop when his lungs continued to push air out of him, but his brain stopped giving him the words to use the fuel for speech.

Marrying Meredith was the thing he wanted most in his life. It was a goal. A goal he considered very far away, way down at the end of the field behind a beefy, unyielding goalie with a mask and shin guards and all sorts of body armor. He wanted to marry Meredith more than anything, and yet… There was nothing he wanted less. It was an odd dichotomy of his lust and his fear. And he had been wrestling with it since she'd died. Since she'd died and come back.

"Right," Burke said.

"I just got out of a marriage. Her mother just died. She's still trying to find her place in her own skin. I'm all for the now, but there's a fine line between doing things for the now and being stupidly impulsive. And on top of all that… I'm, well, I'm…" Derek paused. Give Burke the real reason. The real reason. See what he does with it, a little voice told him. But the words died on his lips in a cracking mess before he could utter them.

He breathed, and breathed, and breathed, trying to keep it together. His fear came in with a mean right hook and sent the rest of him careening flat to the floor. He jerked, unsettled as the crawling, curling flood of panic started to lay its roots in his slightly addled brain.

"Not to throw your words back at you, but… Do you love her?" 

"Yes," he replied reflexively, breaths coming short, almost not hearing the question.

"And she loves you?" Burke prodded. 

"Yes," he replied. Stop, stop, stop, he wanted to stay. Stop the conversation. He couldn't… He dropped his head into his hands. Inhaled in short, short pants.

"So, what's the problem then?"

He swallowed against the swell of panic as it rumbled up from its seeds into a huge, frothing, curling weed. Burke stared at him, eyes narrowed as Derek leaned forward in his chair, shifted, fidgeted against the need to move. The floating, drifting image of Meredith dead and cold on the gurney in the ambulance as Derek stood over her stayed behind his eyelids, stayed burned there as he held his eyes shut, trying to get some equilibrium back.

Since the day at the lake, when Meredith had shown him in the flesh how living and breathing she was, the haunting memory hadn't been as sharp, hadn't been as frightening, but it still lingered like a bad, metallic aftertaste, popping in every once in a while to sour the flavor of everything. The unease, the bitter realization that Meredith held all of his cards in her hand, it all still lingered, still had its claws hooked into his brain.

He wanted a future with her so badly it hurt. When he spent time away from her it hurt. But knowing that all she had to do was have another moment of doubt to lay waste to what was left of him after the last time… That knowledge spurred a coiling, rolling sort of fear, like a thunder that blotted everything else out in the roar. It was the kind of fear that screamed for self-preservation and wouldn't let any other emotion get in its way. He didn't think he would come out standing if she did it again.

And Mere… She tended to marry herself with pain when it presented itself to her. She was happy now. He had no doubt that she was, not after really seeing her the last few days. But…

Burke had his hand on Derek's shoulder. Derek snapped back to himself, found himself sitting there shaking.

"You okay?" Burke asked as the wave receded and Derek sighed, running trembling fingers through his hair.

"I'm… fine," Derek said as all the fear bled out of him in a curdling, rancid flow. His jaw tightened, and for a brief moment, a flare of nausea hit him in the back of his throat, mixed in with the food and the scotch, and it didn't sit so well. He sighed, sighed and sucked in air, sucked it down until the sickness receded.

"I think I disagree," Burke said.

"This is the problem. This is why I can't ask her yet," Derek said with a sigh, gesturing to himself with a weak, shaky hand.

Burke nodded, eyes twitching in an otherwise collected stare. "Another scotch then?"

"Yeah," Derek whispered as the last flare of panic died and his fear went dark, waiting for another round to strike. "Yeah, I think I need one now."


	21. Chapter 21

Cristina sat down on top of the bed and folded her legs underneath her. She leaned forward, eyes bright and teasing. The room was dimly lit with bedside lamps, revealing gleaming, spotless floors unmarred by tossed clothing or orphaned shoes. The bedspread was crisply tucked and folded over the pillows, exactly like they did at hotels. There was positively no junk anywhere. And it was so… not Cristina that Meredith found the sight perplexing. 

"So, how was all the glad you're not crazy sex?" Cristina asked as she settled completely.

"Plentiful," Meredith said with a purr as she sat on the bedspread about three feet from Cristina. "And good. But, Cristina, please, stop joking about it." Meredith knew Cristina meant well. She knew it. But everything regarding Derek felt like a raw, salted wound that she didn't want to poke at. Watching him eat at dinner, really eat, and enjoy it at the same time, well, the feeling had been like morphine. Sweet, druggy morphine. When he'd pulled her into that long, deep kiss at the end of dinner, she'd been riding high, spinning on the bliss, but now that she and Cristina had split off, reality had come back. It had been wonderful to watch him so happy, but not four days ago, things had been very, very dark.

Cristina's gaze ticked away for a moment. She worried her fingers at the spot where the seam of her sock ran along her toes. "Sorry," she muttered. "I don't really know how else to keep it light. Are you all right?" 

"Better, now, after seeing how well dinner went," Meredith said. Truthfully, she had been a little worried, especially after the run-in with Mark, which had shown her Derek was still on a fine, paper thin edge, still not quite all together. 

"He seemed okay to me," Cristina said. 

"He has been since I took him home on Thursday, really, well, not **really** okay until Friday, but you know what I mean. He just has… spells." 

"Spells?"

Meredith sighed. "It's like he's got his fear in a chokehold, but every once in a while, it slips out of his grip for a moment. He goes from happy to seriously upset faster than an eye blink. It's scary, Cristina."

"It's better than before, though." 

"Much. Much better. Phenomenally so. He's talking about things. He's sleeping again. And, well, you saw the heinous amount of food he just ate," Meredith replied. She couldn't stop the sloppy, stupid grin that crossed her face.

"Yeah, I was betting with myself how much he could eat before he puked."

"Cristina…"

"I know, I know. Sorry."

Meredith regarded Cristina for a moment, regarded her friend staring off into space with a worried look plastered across her face, and she immediately deflated. God, she was so self-absorbed sometimes. With the world tumbling around her all the time, it was so easy to forget that others were caught in their own little earthquakes. Their own little disasters.

"No, I'm sorry," Meredith said. "How are you doing? With Burke, and the wedding planning, and all of that?"

Cristina blinked. Her eyes widened, and Meredith felt the guilt plowing into her. Surely Cristina wasn't this surprised that Meredith had steered the conversation back to her? Then again… She hadn't really talked to Cristina about Burke, not seriously at least, for weeks, not since the day she and Derek had gone to the Space Needle. And even then, the chat had been brief. 

"He's still trying to get me to pick a date," Cristina finally answered, her voice low, and slow, and cautious. 

"Well," Meredith said with a chuckle, "When do you think you'd want to get married? Spring? Summer? Fall? Winter? There's only so many dates to choose--" 

"Can we talk about something else?" Cristina snapped. And then her expression softened. "Please?"

Meredith frowned. "Cristina, if you're this upset, are you sure—"

"Something else, please," Cristina said.

For a moment their eyes met, really met, and Meredith saw the pleading that hung there, the fear. Meredith took another glance around the room, another glance of the room where Cristina lived but held nothing of Cristina in it.

"Cristina, what happens when you leave junk out on the floor?" Meredith asked.

Cristina's eyes narrowed and she snorted. "The magical laundry fairy picks it up. Why?"

"But does Burke ever ask you to stop?" 

"Stop?" 

"Throwing your dirty clothes on the floor," Meredith clarified. 

"No. He just keeps picking them up. It's almost annoying sometimes." 

"But he's not trying to change you, Cristina. He's just trying to live with you." 

"What's your point?" Cristina snapped.

"Marriage isn't this big life-sucking monster that's going to swallow you whole, Cristina. You'll still be you. Just like you are now."

Cristina swallowed, looked at the bedspread, fiddled with the seam in her socks again. Silence ticked by, and Meredith was suddenly struck with how quiet Derek and Burke were being, but her wandering attention was drawn back to Cristina, who stared at her with a gaze and a slump that said, "Help me with the weight of the world before I break." Meredith reached across the bed and put her hand on Cristina's shoulder. Cristina flinched, only slightly, and then she relaxed. They sat there, quiet for a few moments. 

"So, any good surgeries at work while I've been out?" Meredith said, finally breaching the long silence.

Cristina dove right into the switch, her eyes flashing with grateful relief. "No, it's been pretty quiet," she pouted. "I actually went in early to try and find something on Friday, but no luck. And all Burke's been doing the past few days is valve replacements. Nothing but valve replacements."

"Well, if you're really desperate," Meredith said, "You could come over and live vicariously through my mother's tapes."

Cristina bounced a little, making the whole bed wobble and creak. Her eyes widened and delight poured from her features. "I don't need to be desperate to watch those. Are you serious? I never asked, because, well--" Her voice fell away.

Meredith stretched out flat on the bed, and her back sighed with relief. Cristina followed suit, and they both lay there, staring at the ceiling side by side.

"You even can borrow them if you want," Meredith said. "They just sit in a box. Nobody's touched them since Izzie and George routed through them when they moved in." And Meredith really didn't want to watch them, not now, not with her mother spending time in a flowerpot on the roof of Seattle Grace. She sighed.

"I could hug you," Cristina said.

Meredith chuckled. "But hugging would be bad."

"Exactly."

"Maybe you and Burke could watch them together," Meredith teased. "Could be romantic, you know!"

"Yeah, yeah," Cristina said with a scoff. She turned and looked at Meredith. "I bet you and McDreamy have done it. Come on, admit it." 

"No, not really," Meredith said. "Outside of work, he pretty much drops the whole surgeon thing."

Cristina stared, her mouth hanging open just a fraction. She swallowed. And stared some more with a confused, amazed look. "You don't talk about work at all?" 

"Unless we're at work, no, not usually." 

"You guys are so weird." 

"It's called having hobbies."

"Oh, come on," Cristina said. "You have sex. That's not a hobby."

"Sex could totally be a hobby!" Meredith protested. 

"Next, you're going to try and convince me that sex comprises your entire exercise routine too."

"Well… It does burn calories."

For a heartbeat, they both stared at each other, faces flat and expressionless, and then, as if someone had hit a switch, they both broke into peals of unending, hysterical laughter, until they were crying, panting, barely able to breathe. It hadn't even been all that funny, but it was just one of those moments where hilarity had broken through all the dour seriousness and been the victor.

The conversation degenerated from there. They talked about stupid stuff. Amusing stuff. Sex stuff. Just stuff. And it was fun and relaxing and, looking back on it, something she'd really, really needed. It'd been so long since she'd just talked with Cristina, talked without the subject being loaded with underlying badness, like something about her mother, something about Derek when he'd still been spiraling down, something about their work and their fast-approaching futures or the necessity of picking a specialty. The stress shucked off her in waves the further and further into inanity the discussion plummeted, and by the end, she felt almost drunk. Drunk on just being relaxed and happy and not having any other thoughts or worries about anything. Cristina looked similarly lax. They sprawled on the bed in the immaculate, too-clean bedroom, staring at the ceiling, until finally Meredith couldn't resist looking at the clock, and was horrified to discover that it was almost midnight. Her shift started tomorrow at six-thirty. And she and Derek still had to get home.

"Oh, my god," Meredith said. She rolled off the bed. Cristina stumbled to her feet, a haze of sleepy relaxation clouding her gaze.

When she exited the bedroom with Cristina in tow, the change in mood registered like a sharp drop in temperature. The bedroom where they'd been had been the tropics. Derek and Burke sat in temperate winter. Nothing looked wrong, per se, but Derek had definitely lost his luster, lost the lazy smile that had infected him earlier. An empty crystal glass sat on a coaster on the coffee table by Derek's knee, and he had his hands folded behind his head while he pondered the ceiling. Burke looked similarly chagrined about the floor, and he held a half-empty wineglass in his hand, which he swirled in slow, slow circles.

"Ready to go?" Meredith asked. "Time kind of did that crazy flying thing."

Derek blinked and his gaze slid to her. His skin was rosy, and his eyes were a touch unfocused. "Yeah," he drawled.

"You want me to drive? You look a little bit not sober."

Derek rolled to his feet. "I think I am a little bit not sober. Just a little. I'll be fine in a half-hour if you want to wait," he said. The syllables were drawn and drawling, but not slurred, and he did seem to have his wits. Most of them. 

"No, I'm fine," Meredith replied as the curiosity built. "I only had two glasses of wine, and that was hours ago."

"Okay," he said. He slid across the floor to her and wrapped his arm around her shoulder in a flowing motion. "Thanks so much for dinner. We should do this more often."

Burke stood from the couch and Cristina went over to him. "Absolutely," Burke said with a real smile.

Meredith couldn't help but frown as Derek helped her with her coat. Maybe she'd been imagining things. They walked out of the apartment complex into the chilly, damp air, and she instinctively drew closer to him. His fingers tightened over her shoulder. Foggy swirls of air clawed from their mouths as they breathed in the darkness.

"Are you sure you're up for work tomorrow?" Meredith asked as they climbed into the car. 

"I'll be fine, Mere," he said. "It's not like I'll actually be working."

She buckled her seatbelt and turned to him. He was staring out the window, nonchalant, unaffected. Where had the smiles gone? She couldn't help but prod. "You're sure," she said. "Absolutely sure? You shouldn't push yourself too hard."

A whispery sound of fabric rustling slid through the air as he shuffled and turned to look her straight in the eye. "I'm okay, Mere. Really," he said.

Meredith frowned. She reached out and placed her right palm against his cheek. His skin had grown cold after being outside, and it was slightly rough with the shadow of stubble that had pushed its way up from the surface since he'd shaved in the morning. His nostrils flared as she rubbed him, and he stared at her with a depthless, hooded gaze that glittered in the darkness of the car. His eyes narrowed a fraction, like they were sliding shut to blink, but they paused a nanosecond later and hung there, a subtle clue that whispered his pleasure to her at the touch. She inhaled the sharp scent of his cologne, inhaled it with the cold, biting air, the faint scent of alcohol, and just a hint of whatever made him Derek. He smiled faintly at her, his expression plainly telling her that he had no idea what she was doing, but that whatever she had in mind was fine with him.

Something was just off. She couldn't explain it, but she couldn't deny it either. Something had upset him, and the remnants still lingered all over him in little shredded pieces of... Wrongness.

She sighed and dropped her hand from his face. "I would believe you more if I knew why you're suddenly so…"

His smile melted away. "So…"

"Well," she said as she looked at him, really looked deeply at him. "It's like someone flipped a light switch. Before I left to talk with Cristina, you were the happiest I'd seen you in weeks. And now… It's like you're unplugged."

He shrugged. "Burke was worried about Cristina. We got into a fairly serious discussion, and it shook me a little. That's all, Mere. I'm okay now."

"Why's he worried about Cristina?" she asked.

"Something about her not being able to pick a date for their wedding?" he said, his tone trailing up in a question even though it wasn't one, as if he expected her to know exactly what he meant.

She did. "Oh, that," Meredith said. "Yeah, Cristina is balking hardcore. I tried to get her to discuss it, but, well, she's Cristina. That's what got you upset? Talking about Cristina?"

The skin around his eyes ticked, so subtly she would have missed it if she weren't already watching him intently. "Well, no," he said, his gaze dropping to his lap. "It was more the subject matter." 

"What, her getting married? Oh. Oh…" All her thoughts came to a halt as she realized the implications of that, the implications of his sudden unwillingness to discuss this with her. For once this weekend, it was him who was treating her with conversational kid gloves instead of the other way around. "So we're not really talking about Cristina anymore," she said, just to clarify, just to make sure.

"No, not really," he mumbled.

So, the M word had come up again. Marriage. Burke had asked Derek about marriage. It was a subject she'd avoided even bringing up. Derek had asked to get an apartment with her, something far greater in scope than she'd ever expected from him at that point, so soon after he'd… broken. She'd been grateful for even that, thought it was a small sign that maybe things weren't as bad as they could have been. But now she saw it, saw in his worried gaze just how much she'd wrecked things for them.

She sighed. "It's okay, you know."

He looked up. "What?"

"I'd be gun-shy too if I had to have a relationship with me. I know I messed up, Derek. I get it. There's trust issues," she explained.

His eyes widened with what she could only describe as desperation, desperation that she just not go there right now. "I'd trust you with my life, Meredith. That's not--" 

"But you don't trust me with my own. I get it, Derek. I do," she said, her voice flat and steady, and from the way his face crumpled, she knew immediately that she'd hit a bull's-eye.

She couldn't blame him, couldn't blame him at all. She'd pulled him down into the water to drown right along with her when she'd given up. It'd seemed so easy at the time, so easy to just… let go. She'd come back from it all shiny and new, but he had still been drowning, still been choking. When he'd been spiraling down, it'd been easy to get lost in the worrying, but now he was breaking the surface, finally taking some breaths. And so the guilt crept back, took her ankles in its grip and yanked her down to skid along the gravel.

"I'm sorry," Derek said.

"Don't apologize to me," she snapped. "I'm the one who thought drowning would be the easy way out. Me. You don't owe me any apologies when I'm the one that did this to you."

"Mere, you didn't…" he stuttered, and she just couldn't hold it all in anymore.

Prickling tears gave way to a deluge. "I'm so sorry, Derek, that I did this to you. You have no idea how much," she said, her voice squeaky and cracking as she ran out of air and was reduced to gasping, choking sobs. "I… wrecked… everything…"

The door slammed as he darted out of the car, and the tears just came harder, thundering down her cheeks in straight, hot, pulsing trails. He was going away… Finally realizing…

But then her own door opened, and he was wrapping himself all around her like a second coat. "Hey," he whispered. He reached across the seatbelt and unlatched it. Then she was being lifted, lifted into his arms, and he hugged her, leaning against the side of the car as he rocked her back and forth. "Whoa…" he whispered. "Shhh…"

She wrapped her arms around his neck and cried and cried and cried. "I didn't mean it, Derek. I didn't mean to do this. I didn't know…"

He ran his hands through her hair. The shushing noises continued, soothing her with a rush of words that wrapped around her like a blanket, until finally, she curled in his arms, silent, and they stood against the car in the cold, breathing, but quiet. When she looked at him, he looked as lost as she felt, like he wanted to reassure her, wanted to say it was all okay, wanted to say she was wrong, but he just couldn't, and he hated himself because he couldn't.

"I don't want you to ask me to marry you right now anyway, so you can stop stressing about it," she said, her voice hoarse and wrecked.

That broke him from his worried stupor. "What? Why?"

"Because. I'm terrified too. Knowing I have this much power over you is terrifying, Derek. I've never had that with anyone before," she said.

A ghost of a chuckle fell from his lips, leaving a trail of puffy vapor in the air behind it like an echo. "We certainly are a pair, aren't we?" he said, his tone dragged down to the pavement with rue.

She sniffled. "Yeah."

He sighed after a long silence, a long silence in which he'd done nothing but rock her and hold her and be exactly what she needed. "Mere?" 

"What?" she asked. She reached up to brush the dampness away from her face. He set her down, and they wandered over to the curb to sit. A creeping, damp cold seeped through the back of her pants as she rested on the pavement, but she didn't care.

"Are you really okay about your mother dying? I'm not going to… Well, I can handle it if you want to talk to me about it," he said.

She shrugged, leaning over to pick at her shoes. Her knees jammed into her chest, making it difficult to breathe more than a little sigh at a time. "Most days, I am. Okay, I mean." And she was, mostly. Mostly okay. Mostly okay, except…

"How about today?" he prodded.

Meredith closed her eyes, remembering the snippets of dark, blurry imagery that had stayed with her since she'd woken. "She said she was proud of me."

"What?" 

"When I was dead. It's what she said to me. That I was anything but ordinary. But it wasn't real, was it? My head made it up for me."

He pulled her into his arms and rubbed his hands up and down the length of her coat. Warmth crept through the fabric. "You knew she was gone when you woke up," he said. 

"I did." 

"Look, Mere," he said. He put his fingers under her chin, pulled her gaze up, up, up from the warmth of his chest to look at his eyes. "Everything I know about the human brain tells me that you had a classic near death experience, that it can be explained away with neurotransmitters. And I've never been big on the spiritual stuff..."

"But?" she whispered. His words had an unspoken but at the end.

He shrugged and looked blankly up at the sky. "But you knew about your mother. So, no, Mere, I can't just tell you it wasn't real. This whole thing… all of it… The fact that you're here, breathing. Sometimes I wonder if science really is all there is… I just don't know anymore."

"I hope it was real," she sighed as she leaned back into him.

He swallowed, his head jerking slightly with the motion of it. "Then it was, Mere," he said. As though it were simple. As though it were a mere matter of her wanting it badly enough that fantasy became the truth.

"My mom died, Derek," she said.

His hand ran up and down her back in slow, soothing motions. "I know. I'm sorry."

A car drove past, breaking the silence with a jarring, belching roar. She shuddered as the quiet scuttled back in the growling vehicle's wake. The streetlamp overhead buzzed. He breathed next to her. She watched the vapor unfurl into the space between them.

"Can we make a pact?" she asked.

Derek's hands paused their soothing motions, and he looked at her. "What did you have in mind?" 

"Let's just worry about now, Derek," she said. "That's enough. Marriage… That's icing on the cake. I just want us to be okay again. The rest we can deal with later."

"Okay, Mere," he whispered.

"Okay?" she asked.

He nodded. "Okay," he said again.

When she started to shiver, he picked her up and put her in the passenger seat. He drove her home in silence, but it was a comfortable silence. When they climbed into bed, sleep came quickly for both of them.


	22. Chapter 22

**Author's notes: Thanks again for all the reviews! I am constantly amazed by the overwhelming response this story has been getting :)**

* * *

"You're sure you're okay to do this?" Meredith asked once more as she pulled into a parking space in the Seattle Grace lot. The morning was still very new, and the dim light of the sun, which hung low and sleepy, barely peaking over the horizon line yet, cast long shadows. Most of the bedraggled people stumbling out of their cars, yawning and stretching and inhaling offerings from Starbucks, were interns and residents, since most attendings had the good sense and finally the capability to make their schedules more reasonable. Nobody seemed to notice Derek and Meredith in the car, which was promising.

Derek swallowed. "I'll be fine, Mere. I can get caught up on paperwork today. I've got a huge backlog."

"Well, beep me if you need a quickie in the supply closet or something," she muttered as she twisted backward to grab her purse out of the back seat.

"Wait," he said with a frown. "You mean I could have beeped you for closet quickies all this time? Where was **that** memo?" 

"I was kidding, Derek." 

"Damn." 

"Is it true that men think of sex every six seconds? With you, it seems more like three."

"Ouch, Mere."

She smiled. "It's okay. I'm worse, I think."

She kissed him quickly, just a routine peck on the cheek, and he grinned as she leaned back and started futzing around with the contents of her purse, a purse that he knew from experience could hold a vast array of items incalculably disproportionate to its small size. She was just so… Relaxed. And comfortable. And all his.

He reached over the back of the seat for his own briefcase where his pager, his personal cell phone, and his work cell phone were all clipped in a row across the side flap pocket. He'd had all of them turned off except for his personal one since Thursday. Meredith must have done that, because he couldn't… couldn't remember even touching them. He'd finally followed suit with his personal phone on Sunday, when continuous calls had started to fray his weakened nerves.

It felt weird turning them all back on again. His personal phone chirped at him after it blinked on and acquired a signal, letting him know he had some new voicemail. Probably about fifty-seven messages from Addison, if the frequency at which she'd started calling him on Sunday had been any indication. He swallowed against a thick knot of worry. He really didn't want to talk to Addison. Not about… Well, not about anything.

"Okay," Meredith said. "My shift ends at, um… really late. If you can't make it that long, just go home. I'll find a ride. I'm serious, Derek. Don't push it."

"Mere, I'll live," Derek said with a sigh. "You're really making me wish you'd hurry up and get out of residency, though. We could make our own schedules a lot nicer then."

"I'm not even out of internship yet, Derek." 

"You're close," he said.

"Ugh," she grunted. "Don't remind me. Only a few more weeks left and I still have no idea what my specialty will be."

"I know," Derek said. "But you'll be fine, Meredith. You'll pick something, and you'll be great at it."

Her eyes twinkled. "Well, I'm glad we agree."

Derek watched her, watched her smile, deep and full, all the way across her face, crinkling the skin around her eyes. She'd never been this at ease with picking a specialty before… She'd always agonized. Agonized, wondering why she couldn't figure out what she wanted. And now she didn't betray a single worry on her face.

"You're agreeing with me? This is the part where you usually moan." 

"Yes," she said with a smile. "But I had a discussion with my mother's ashes about it. I decided that I'm going to be awesome. Thus no more moaning."

"Really?" 

"Yes, really. She didn't talk back, so I assume she agrees."

"Meredith…"

"Bad joke, I know. But, really, Derek. I'm fine. And last night… It helped."

He smiled. "I can see that," he replied, a little dumbfounded at how… not upset she was.

She glanced at her watch. "I have to run. Bailey is going to kill me. Are you coming?" 

"Yeah, in a minute." He breathed, staring at the hospital like it was this huge, carnivorous creature lying in wait for him, ready to pounce if he would just step out of the car… "I just need a minute."

She frowned at him.

"I'm fine, Mere." 

"You're sure."

"Yes." 

"Absolutely sure?" 

"Mere, go to work," he said.

She sighed, a flustered look spreading across her face. "Fine."

With a faint smile tugging at his lips, he watched her go. He leaned back in the seat, trying to relax as she disappeared into the building. People walked in from the parking lot past the car, some chattering like morning people, others barely there and bleary like night people, all oblivious to him sitting there, worrying and tormented in his own little zone of private panic. He sighed, his fingers working at the leather strap of his briefcase without him even thinking about it. Squeak, squeak, squeak. Squeak, squeak, squeak.

After several minutes, he managed to drag himself out of the car. He locked it, bypassing the lock button on his keychain and actually sticking the key in the lock, anything to slow himself down. He walked. Walked with plodding, unhurried steps as he sized up the entrance. He was in the middle of pondering the dubiously short length of the front walk when someone finally noticed him.

"Derek!" Addison said.

He started, shying to the side as she came up beside him. "Addison," he said, the word more of a breath than speech. His heart started to thump, thump, thump, harsh and distracting as Addison frowned at him. He didn't want to talk about Thursday. Not with her. Not with anyone, really, but especially not with her. And she was the kind of person who would ask. She would--

"I heard about…" she said, not finishing the sentence. "Are you… are you okay? I tried to call you on Sunday." She stood there in black stilettos, black-pleated skirt and sharp-looking floral printed blouse, red hair gathered up in a simple ponytail, looking all austere, and fashionable, and worried. Her thin, manicured fingers curled over the straps of her purse.

He swallowed as the heat of embarrassment began to flush over him. "I'm fine," he said.

"You don't look fine." 

"Okay, I've been better," he amended as he gave her a pleading gaze, a pleading gaze that he hoped would tell her to just leave him be, leave him alone while he walked in and got accustomed to things again.

"Are you going in to meet with Richard?" she asked, shifting her weight from one pointy foot to the other.

"Yes," he said, the single syllable clipped and abrupt. He closed his eyes for a moment. He'd wanted to be left alone when he came in, wanted to be ignored so he could stand there by himself and figure everything out again, maybe come to grips with the shivery, cold fear slipping under his skin.

"I'll walk with you." 

"I can make it there by myself, Addison," he snapped, unable to stop himself. He regretted it, being nasty to her, he did, but at that moment, he just couldn't be nice. He felt like an animal stuck in a claw trap, ready to bite anything that came close. And Addison was getting painfully close.

She sighed, but didn't offer any sort of retort. A slip of concern crossed her face. He clenched his teeth and turned away, unable to watch the gears turn behind her eyes as she assessed him. He walked through the doors, pushing through them with a heaving gesture. Anything to get away from her.

But when he made it into the waiting area, his sudden drive to move ceased, he stopped, and his breath caught. Derek stood still, not really knowing what to do as the lobby enveloped him. The last time, when he'd been on his way out of the hospital, sneaking out the back entrance like some sort of criminal, he'd barely been able to walk, and everyone had seen it, had probably had a great, long laugh about it on Friday after the gossip had fully circulated into every nook and cranny. Now, he was back, and he didn't know what that meant.

He closed his eyes, breathing in the scent of sterile, immaculate hospital. Nobody stopped him, nobody said hello, nobody beset him with questions. But the longer things went without interruption, the more shaky his nerves got, and he stood there, trembling, not quite sure what to do, move forward, or stay until things evened out a bit. The longer he stayed, wallowing in indecision, the worse it got, and he didn't know why.

"Nobody's going to jump you, Derek," Addison said as she came up behind him again.

"You just did," he snapped. 

She frowned. "I—"

"I'm sorry Addison. I'm just…" He ran a hand through his hair, breathed in and out, in and out, trying to calm his quivering nerves, but it wasn't working at all.

"I know. I'm sorry, Derek. I didn't mean to attack you, I was just worried."

"I'll be fine in a minute," he said, though he really wasn't sure if that was a lie or not. "I'm just a little…" Shaky, disturbed, tired, worried, panicked, upset? Adjectives ran through his head in a swirl that made him feel faint. He swayed, swayed there like one of those stand-up, inflatable punching bags that kids got, the ones that kept bouncing up in a flurry after they got knocked around.

"You'll call me if you need help?" she asked. She eyed him, her eyes narrowing into slits of concerned worry… worry that made him want to snarl at her again, but instead he nodded, mute as the rush of words escaped him entirely, leaving him blank and feeling just about ready to give into the flight response and bolt back out the door.

He swallowed as she left him standing there in front of the elevator, an island of inactivity in the bustle. He wasn't planning on calling her if he needed help. If he needed help, actually, he wasn't sure at all what he was going to do. Hide in a closet? Run for cover? Break something else? He'd kept assuring Meredith he would be fine, that he would be peachy, even as he'd sat there, a new coil of nerves winding up and twisting inside him with each passing second. He couldn't call her like some needy child… And calling his ex-wife… well, that was just… not going to happen. No matter how friendly things were between them these days.

No, he would do this. Do this on his own. And he wouldn't go crazy. He wouldn't let it all drag him down again. He wouldn't let this happen again. He wouldn't… He breathed with new resolve, and despite the shakes, he slammed his thumb into the up button as though it were a hated enemy.

The trip to Chief Webber's office was somewhat trying. The closer he managed to get to his destination, the more people recognized him, the more his colleagues started appearing out of the woodwork, the more he received well-wishes, pats on the back. People beset him from all directions, crowding him, asking him how he was, crushing him with questions that he answered, breathy and flustered. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. He'd said it so much by the time he slogged up to the Chief's door, he felt like a scratched up record on a turntable. The halls were certainly spinning enough for it to be true.

He darted into the Chief's office without knocking, feeling shaky and tired and in desperate need to escape the sea of concern and false smiles and people skittering everywhere.

"Shepherd," the Chief said as Derek rested his forehead on the cool surface of the door. 

That was when Derek looked up and registered that he wasn't the only one in the room besides Chief Webber. Dr. Wyatt sat at the desk across from the Chief. The redheaded doctor turned at the intrusion, turned and blinked. "Dr. Shepherd," Dr. Wyatt said, his voice quiet, barely there.

For a moment, Derek thought everything had seized up. His breaths halted. He couldn't think. Couldn't speak. He stood flat against the door and shook. And then it all slammed back into him like a wrecking ball. "Um," he muttered as he pawed blindly for the doorknob. "I'm sorry, I—"

The Chief frowned at him. "No, have a seat, Shepherd. I didn't realize you'd be in this early. But this is fine."

"Okay," Derek said weakly, unable to stop staring at Dr. Wyatt, who was staring right back at him. Derek collapsed into the chair nearest to the door. His briefcase slipped off his arm and onto the floor with a thud. He sat there, breathing in short gasps that wouldn't lengthen, just wouldn't lengthen into something substantial enough for him to get his equilibrium back.

The Chief stood. "I have to meet with my secretary quickly. I'll be back in a few moments."

With that, Chief Webber left them alone in the room, and Derek felt betrayed. Betrayed, because it was all so engineered. Engineered and false. The Chief didn't have anything that needed to be done with the secretary. He just didn't want to be in the room with the two former combatants during round one of the rematch. Coward, he thought, though Derek wasn't sure who exactly he was insulting anymore.

Derek collapsed his face into his hands. He felt the burning stare of Dr. Wyatt on him, hot and flaring across his skin, and yet the other doctor said nothing. Derek groaned into his palms, panting, trying to will the panic away by sheer force, but it wasn't listening. He wasn't ready to have this discussion now, not this one, the one where his future would be decided.

"Are you okay?" Dr. Wyatt asked, finally breaking the silence.

"I've been better," Derek said with a wry chuckle. He took another steadying breath, and the tremors receded enough for him to have a thought that didn't revolve around how disturbed he was. Why did Dr. Wyatt even care? He looked up and allowed himself to really absorb the younger doctor's appearance. Dr. Wyatt's eyes were rimmed with red and bloodshot with a spider's web of veins. His hair jutted out in unkempt spikes that said he hadn't bothered with a comb or a brush in a while. Paleness washed his skin with an alabaster, haunted tone. His face dripped with a raw excess of pain.

"Me, too," Dr. Wyatt said. His gaze dropped to the floor. His throat rippled as he swallowed.

Silence stretched between them like a rubber band, each second yanking it farther and farther toward its breaking point.

"I'm sorry," Derek blurted, overwhelmed with the tension crackling in the air between them. "For—"

Dr. Wyatt let loose a wracked, tortured laugh, interrupting him. "You don't have to apologize to me." 

"But I—"

"Tried to save the woman I killed." 

"I shouldn't have gotten physical."

Dr. Wyatt shrugged in a rolling motion that was far from carefree, a rolling motion that said who cared about the details. Who cared about the what of it all. It was tortured, stuttering, and full of pain that said he really just didn't care about Derek right then, about what Derek had done, that he had enough of his own problems to deal with.

"Have you ever… Have you ever killed anyone, Dr. Shepherd?" Dr. Wyatt asked, his voice low and warped and breaking.

Derek swallowed against the sudden flow of memories. Slowly, the nerves went away. They crept back into their boxes, and he had control of himself again. His hands moved when he said to move. They didn't just hang there attached to his wrists, trembling like they were caught on a live wire. He breathed and looked. He saw Dr. Wyatt sitting there, really saw him, and saw himself staring back. It was an odd moment.

"A long time ago," he answered after long pause.

"How did you…" Dr. Wyatt paused. His whole body shuddered. "Cope?" 

"I'm the wrong person to be asking about coping," Derek answered. He'd done much the same bottling that he always did, until Mark had dragged him to a bar and made him talk. There hadn't been much coping involved. Just repressing, and then a lot of shouting. And it had been very ugly.

Dr. Wyatt nodded, looking down at his pants and fiddling with some thread that only he could see. They sat there in abject, silent misery for less than thirty seconds before Chief Webber walked back in. He burst through the door as though he'd been standing on the other side with his stethoscope resting against the surface the whole time while he listened to the confessionals.

"Did you two talk?" he asked, though it was one of those questions that just dripped superficiality. The Chief knew they had talked. It was written all over his face.

They both nodded, mute.

Webber sat down at his desk and started shuffling with some papers. "Good. Now, about this peer-counseling thing…" he muttered.

Derek sighed. He'd heard Izzie's horror stories through Meredith. He'd been hoping the peer counseling would be overlooked, cancelled, forgotten about, anything but actually carried through with. He'd barely made it to this moment, this moment where he sat there in the Chief's office awaiting judgment. He didn't want to spill his guts to a peer, somebody he knew, somebody who knew him. He didn't want to, and he didn't think he actually could at this point. He just hoped Chief Webber had the good sense not to stick him with Addison or Mark. If that happened… Well, no job, no matter how much he loved it, was going to keep him there for that.

"Dr. Wyatt, I'd like you to meet with Dr. Heron when you get a chance. And Shepherd… Shepherd…"

Derek ran his hands shakily through his hair. Not somebody he knew. Please not---

"Dr. Bailey." 

"What?" Derek said.

The Chief stared at him. "What, did you not hear? Dr. Bailey. Go find her." 

"I can't—" he stuttered. 

"You can if you want to keep your job, Shepherd. She usually takes notes in the gallery right around now. Go find her."

Derek swallowed and stood, swaying as his nerves took him back into their twitchy grip. Dr. Bailey? He hadn't even considered… In a daze, he wandered into the attendings' locker room and changed into his scrubs. Dr. Bailey? He couldn't… Miranda… He… That… This was bad.

It took him several tries to tie the drawstring on his pants, his fingers shook so violently. He shoved his briefcase into the locker, not even bothering to take anything out of it. He clipped his beeper and his cell phones onto their holders, though it took forever. Forever to get them on straight. He sat on the bench and tried to get his cross-trainers on, tried to tie the laces. But those were being stubborn too.

He finally had to stop, stop and just breathe. He shouldn't have come to work today. He really shouldn't have done it. The worried chorus built and built in his head until he was sitting there feeling nauseated, and a headache pulsed behind his eyes like a living organism trying to hammer its way out of his skull. He'd barely been able to talk to Burke yesterday, and yet he'd somehow gotten it in his head that he would be okay to field questions from the entire hospital staff? From Miranda? Miranda, who he admired more than anyone else who worked at Seattle Grace?

A curdled moan fell from his lips. Another locker slammed. "You okay, Shep?" Dr. Mannheim said as he passed by somewhere behind Derek.

"Fine," Derek whispered.

Derek finally stood and evacuated the locker room, if only to get away from all the people passing through. It was still a bit early for all the attendings to be getting in to work. But the trickle had begun, and he didn't want to be sitting there for every co-worker to dissect and analyze.

He wandered down to the gallery. Most people seemed to be giving him a wide-berth, as if they were at last figuring out that seeing him stumbling around like a nervous, drowning wreck was not their cue to intrude and ask him if he was okay. Really. The answer was self-evident, anyway. Regardless of why, they left him alone, and the relief at not being poked and prodded further helped a little with the worry.

He found Dr. Bailey sitting in the gallery, exactly as Chief Webber had predicted. He stood, looking through the narrow glass window in the door and sighed. He'd been hoping he would have an excuse to wander around some more, alone, 'looking' for her. But there she was, writing notes on a clipboard in the dim light. No surgeries were happening below yet, and the interns were all most likely still out on pre-rounds and early morning scut assignments. So nobody else was there.

He inhaled one last cleansing time before he pushed through the door.

"I was wondering if you would be smart enough to take today off," she muttered without looking up as the door swung shut behind him. "I guess not."

"I'm fine," he said, his voice whispery as he sat down next to her, one empty seat intervening in the space between them. He folded over and leaned his head into his hands, waiting, just waiting for the yelling and snapping and snarling to start. He had no doubt that Dr. Bailey would take the opportunity to bring him down a couple pegs.

She glanced up briefly before going back to her notes. "You look like a six-year-old could knock you over," she said.

Peg one.

He sighed, and with the whole rush of air, he wilted, giving up all pretense of trying to fake okayness. He should have known it would never work with her. "It's been a rough morning," he said, groaning into his hands, hands that had started to shake again.

"Did you talk to Dr. Wyatt?" 

"Yes."

She stared at him. Her head started to shake, back and forth, back and forth. She sighed. "You are such a fool," she said.

"Do you even know how to counsel?" he snapped, daring to look her in the eye. "I'm feeling more beset than counseled."

She shrugged, her eyes not leaving his. It was a bitter staring match that, after about ten tortured seconds, drove him to look at his lap, at his shaking hands. His whole body felt like a quivery mess, and he sat there praying, praying that he would get through this. He had to make it through this.

"I read the manual," she said. "It's a load of bull, in my opinion."

He jerked his gaze up again, unwilling to let her cow him into submission yet. "Oh, is it?"

"Yes," she said. "Now, shut up while I counsel you." 

"I—" 

"Derek, do you want me to give you a bad eval? Because I will. I so will." 

Peg two.

He looked back down. He slumped even further in his chair.

"When I had William, the day you had my husband's skull cracked open on your operating table… it was upsetting to be so out of control. I actually tried to walk out of the hospital while I was in labor." 

"Addison didn't tell me that." 

"I'm making a point. Be quiet," she snapped. "Look, there will always be things in life that you can't control. You need to figure that out, or you're going to be a train wreck from now to finish."

He sighed and wrung his hands together. Clammy and cold, they slipped and slid, and his grip seemed more like a touch than the actual act of holding. He sighed again, trying to stop himself. Stop himself from freaking out at being under fire. He never should have come into work today. He just wasn't ready for an inquisition, especially from Miranda. He'd thought Addison would be bad. But… Miranda?

"This is different. Meredith… She—" he gasped, on the verge of... Something.

"She died," Dr. Bailey said with a nod. "Death is the biggest cosmic I-told-you-so for when we think we have our lives in our own grasp. As a doctor, as a surgeon, I would have thought you knew that by now."

The nerves all piled up in one giant swell and snapped. "She **let** herself die, Miranda. She let herself go," he blurted. And then the stirrings of panic started to pulse again, deep in his gut. He hadn't meant to bring Meredith's private business out onto the table, especially to her boss. But…

"So, you're pissed off because it was her decision and not God's? Is that it?" Dr. Bailey asked.

He ran his hands through his hair. "I'm not mad. I'm terrified. Miranda, I can't do this again. I can't. Just look at me. I can't go through this again."

She frowned. "Well, you need to make up your mind then."

"Make up my mind?"

Dr. Bailey put her notepad down and turned to him. She drew a deep, deep breath, one that racked her whole tiny frame. It was as if she were preparing herself for battle, and Derek felt himself instinctively hunkering down under the weight of her stare.

"She was glowing this morning," Dr. Bailey said. "Whatever you did this weekend, it must have been special. I've never seen her that happy."

"What does that have to do with—"

Dr. Bailey held her hand up, silencing him. "She won't be happy when you dump her on her ass again because you can't deal with her quirks."

His jaw dropped. "You're calling her dying on purpose a quirk?" 

"Derek, you have put that girl through every torture imaginable, and she still comes back to you. You didn't tell her about Dr. Montgomery. Then, you strung her along for months while you supposedly tried to work things out. I saw how you made your stupid McDreamy eyes at her the whole time, too. McDreamy… McDreamy, my ass. McSchmuck would fit better. I knew about that pathetic little let's-be-friends experiment, too. That was the cruelest thing you ever could have done. So, don't you think she feels the same way about you? That she can't do it again? Open your eyes, fool."

Peg three. Peg four. A whole pile of pegs broke and went spilling to the floor with hollow plinks.

"I—" he began. But that single word was all he could manage. He swallowed, blank, a blank slate of thoughts and words as what Dr. Bailey had said seeped in.

"Damned right you better be speechless," Dr. Bailey muttered.

Derek watched through the cracks in his fingers as the operating room below began to fill. His eyes widened as he saw Meredith's unmistakable, lithe little figure strutted out into the room, already in her scrub gear. Dr. Weller wandered in shortly after her, and soon a patient was being wheeled in through the large double doors. He glanced at Dr. Bailey, who had a knowing smirk on her face, as if she'd planned this, as if she'd known Meredith was going to come walking in any moment.

"Derek," Dr. Bailey said, yanking him back, kicking and screaming into the discussion. "You need to decide whether you trust her or not, and you need to do it fast, because if you take too long before you let her go again, you're going to break her just like she broke you. Hell, it's probably already too late. And you will let her go if you can't get through this. Because torturing her any more than you already have will mean I have one less intern. Which is more work for me, and that makes me cranky. Do you like it when I'm cranky?" 

"No," he whispered. 

"Good. I don't either," Dr. Bailey said as she gathered up her clipboard and pen and other things. "Your assignment is to watch this surgery from start to finish. And then you can go get your paperwork done, or whatever it was that you planned to do today. But don't come moping around in my direction until you can tell me what the hell you want with regards to my intern."

And then she was gone. He was alone in the gallery. Meredith glanced up and saw him. Her eyes brightened and she waved quickly before refocusing on her task at hand. He leaned back in his chair.

He felt sick, sick to his stomach. He'd never thought about… thought about what he'd put her through. Not really. It had always been about him, his torture, his pain over trying to deal with Addison despite the fact that he still loved Meredith and couldn't really get over it no matter how hard he tried to let it go away, tried waiting for it to pass. He'd cared deeply when Meredith was upset, when Meredith moped, but he hadn't really ever connected it together before, connected together the dots. Yes, she had her mother and Thatcher to worry about, but really. Really… He had been the constant in her life, the every day thing, as she'd gradually slipped from happy to pained and sad and moping over the months. Not Ellis. Not Thatcher.

And now he felt sick.

He wiped his hands at his face as his eyes started to water, uncontrollably water. Meredith adroitly worked below. She looked like she felt completely at home behind her surgeon's mask as Dr. Weller instructed her through a craniotomy. She was perfect, and beautiful, and smart, and funny, and…

The door opened. "Derek?" a smooth voice interrupted.

He blinked. God, he just didn't have the energy for this right now. He didn't. He sighed, too upset already to even care that he was falling apart, and too tired to be embarrassed about it. "What is it, Mark?" he asked, his voice trapped in a weary crush.

"Dr. Weller is letting Meredith do a craniotomy by herself? Hey, that's great," Mark said as he sank into the seat next to Derek.

Derek sighed into his hands. "Yes. She's a great surgeon."

"She is," Mark agreed.

"And she's…" Derek stared at her, watched as her tiny fingers worked skillfully to save the patient, an older man, probably in his fifties. The procedure was textbook. Even Dr. Weller looked appropriately amazed that an intern was doing it so well. "Perfect."

"I'll take your word on that," Mark said, said in a sincere voice, a sincere voice that said he wasn't going to be touching Meredith with a fifty foot pole.

"I'm such a bastard," Derek said. He sniffled again. Coughed with grief. Exhaustion overwhelmed him again in a bitter wave. Everything ached, and his roaring headache came back to torture him.

"Um," Mark said. "Okay."

The door opened, and Derek crumpled. "Get out," Mark said. "This is private." 

"Sorry," someone muttered.

And they were alone again.

"Are you all right, Derek?" Mark asked, his voice hitching, as if he wasn't really sure what he was supposed to be doing, but he was going to give it a try, regardless.

Derek shook his head. "No."

"Well, obviously grabbing a beer is out," Mark muttered with rue. A soft, slithering sound filtered through the air as Mark rubbed his face slowly with his large hands. From the corner of his eye, Derek saw the glitter of Mark's wristwatch as it swept past in an arc.

Derek sighed, put his face in his hands and just let the grief roll. Silence thickened into something tangible. They sat there while he shook and broke down in a vaguely similar repeat of Thursday, albeit less violent.

"What do you do without beer?" Mark asked.

Derek laughed despite himself. He looked up, blinking away tears only to have them replaced. "Walk trails. Bike. Camp. Fish. Read. Do crossword puzzles." 

"Now I get it," Mark said, his voice swelling with a sudden understanding. His lips quirked into a haughty smirk that was just so typical of Mark that Derek didn't even care that it seemed to be at his expense. "You've turned hippie."

Derek didn't answer.

"Well," Mark grumbled, "If you want to go fishing sometime, I think I could do that. I still need to get my bike back before… Well. Never mind. I'll leave you alone." Mark stood with a heaving sigh and turned to leave.

"You can stay," Derek whispered.

Mark stopped. "Okay," he said. He sat back down. "It'll be all right, man," he said, awkward, his face creased with a strange, atypical confusion. He turned his attention back to Meredith, the frown still hanging from his face like a badly tacked poster. It just didn't fit right. Not on Mark.

The door opened again. "Go away!" Mark belted.

Derek sighed as the door shut again, drowning out the sound of somebody gasping in surprise on the other side. "Thanks," he said. 

"No problem," Mark said. He relaxed back into the chair, slouching.

Derek didn't know why, but he found it comforting.


	23. Chapter 23

**Author's notes: Aaaggh, ffnet has not been letting me upload. Sorry this is late!  
**

* * *

When Meredith finally finished her shift, she ached everywhere, and tiredness clung to her pores like some sort of awful, smelly perfume. She collapsed onto the bench and changed at a glacial pace that made her feel like a member of the geriatric community. When her regular clothes hugged her, slowly collecting bits of warmth from her skin, she just sat there, her eyelids drooping. For a few seconds, she drifted, started tilting over, and then someone snapped a locker door shut, bringing her back to wakefulness in the cruel grip of whiplash.

She glanced at her watch as she shook away the sleep that crept behind her eyes like a stalking predator. Midnight. Almost an eighteen hour shift, and she'd actually done a craniotomy all by herself. All by herself! The thought sent a giddy tremor racing through her. She smiled despite the tiredness. Yes!

And Derek had been watching for most of it, too. She'd waved at him, but her attention had been taken back to the surgery, and she hadn't looked up again. She'd have to ask him for an honest opinion when she saw him, but from what Dr. Weller had said and how she'd felt after she'd finished… she'd done some damn fine work.

She grinned again. Laughed. A few other tired interns who were finishing off their shifts looked up at her, shrugged, and went back to changing. Interns tended to be a little crazy by midnight, so it was doubtful anyone thought much of it.

She stood, gathering her purse up over her shoulder as she glanced at her small wristwatch again. Time hadn't moved much. Twelve ten, the watch proclaimed, a little too cheerfully for her tastes. She tapped the glass. God. She groaned when she thought about all the things she still had to do. She still had to get home. She also had to figure out if Derek was still around somewhere. She doubted it. He **should** have gone home hours ago. There was no way he was ready to be at Seattle Grace for eighteen hours. Not on his first time out.

She dialed his cell, but it went to voicemail without even ringing. She beeped him with her cell phone number, and then took off to wander the halls. His office was probably the best bet. He had mentioned paperwork. She went there, but his door was shut and the lights were out. She knocked anyway, but no sound came from within, no sign of stirring. Addison, Mark, and Burke were all gone for the night, too, so there was no one left around to ask who she felt comfortable approaching, not any attendings anyway.

She started systematically checking all the on-call rooms next, but he wasn't anywhere. Each time she pushed open a door and peered at the beds, some full of lumps that weren't Derek, some empty, another pang of doubt hit her. Surely, he must have gone home. But then, why wouldn't he be answering his phone? She beeped him again with a frown and went out to the parking lot, only to find the car still there, sitting lonely by itself. The cars that had been parked on either side in the morning apparently had owners still possessing the good sense to get some sleep.

So. The car was still there. That meant he was at Seattle Grace somewhere, unless he'd gotten a ride home with somebody else, but who? She doubted he would have gone to Addison or Mark, and she'd watched Burke leave with Cristina and no Derek in tow. He didn't have any other friends to ask, and he wasn't the kind of person who would impose on any colleague that walked by, especially as embarrassed as he'd been lately with how shaky he was. He couldn't have… called a taxi, right? He wouldn't have done that… Then again, he might have, out of politeness, just to leave her with a way home when she would obviously be tired and wanting to leave right away.

She called home. Izzie picked up with a barely audible hello. "Izzie, I'm sorry if I woke you," she said. "Derek's not at home, is he?"

"Ummm," Izzie muttered. "Lemmguhchek," she said, barely.

Meredith waited for about four minutes before Izzie came back on the line. A load roar of sound burst through the receiver, and Meredith pulled it back from her ear with a wince. A clunk followed by a rumble of breathing preceded Izzie mumbling sleepily, "Nope. Not here. Something wrong?" At least she sounded slightly more coherent than she had been when she'd left to look around.

Meredith swallowed against the guilt over waking her. For interns, sleep was a blessing, and she'd probably just guaranteed Izzie's shift tomorrow would be miserable. "No," Meredith said as she frowned. "Thanks, Izzie. Sorry for waking you."

Izzie hung up after mumbling a quick goodbye.

She headed back to the admitting desk. "Have you seen Dr. Shepherd?" she asked. The nurse on duty shook her head. Meredith frowned.

Well, where the heck did that leave to look?

Meredith rotated on the balls of her feet, looking around as though Derek might pop out from any door. Okay, now she was starting to get a little worried. She beeped him again and started walking in a grid pattern through the surgical wing, but it was as if he'd been excised from the earth. She found no trace of him anywhere, and none of the nurses had seen him since that morning. On a last ditch effort, she headed down to the basement and beeped him again.

Wait. She paused.

She reached down to her phone and beeped him again. There it was. Faint. The sound of a pager going off. She hit redial and waited for the sound of the beeper to guide her as she pushed through the double doors to the long, junk-filled hallway where she, Izzie, Cristina, George, and Alex often hung out to study, goof off, or just rest. It was the one place that practically no one else in the hospital ever went. And it appeared that Derek had found it.

He was stretched out on his stomach in his scrubs on one of the beds, his head buried in the crook of one arm. The other arm dangled over the side. His beeper went off again from her last call, and he shifted, snuffled, and resettled again. She smiled as the relief pulsed through her like a drug. Not excised from the world then, she thought, just dead to it.

She crept up next to him and put her hand on his back. "Derek," she whispered.

He groaned and resettled, muttering something that could have been a word in English or possibly Swahili.

"Derek, wake up," she said, rubbing her hand up along his scrubs. The fabric rustled against her fingers. His soft breathing made his torso rise into her grasp. "Time to go home."

He sighed and rolled over, blinking. "What?" he asked, his voice thick with sleep and confusion.

"My shift is over, Derek. Time to go. I swear, Derek, I just spent a half hour looking for you. You're very hard to find when you're comatose," she said with a laugh. She bent in to kiss him, kiss him long and full, but he was so out of it that he didn't really do much more than receive.

She licked her lips as she pulled back, wondering how long he'd been there. That hadn't been just a nap she'd walked in on, but genuine sleep. Deep, deep sleep. At least that meant he'd found a safe middle ground. Not going home without her, but not working the whole time, either. She could live with that. At least he'd known when to quit.

He blinked again, not quite all awake yet as he ran his hands over his face. When he pulled back his palms, he looked just as bleary and red-eyed as he'd begun. He rolled off the bed, stumbled a little as gravity kicked in and he wasn't quite ready for it. He leaned on the bed until his nose was practically shoved into the mattress. He swallowed and squeezed his eyes shut, looking almost sick.

"Derek, are you all right?" she asked before she could stop herself. This seemed more like he really was pulling himself out of a coma than just deep sleep.

"Rough day," he muttered, the sound of his voice muffled by the mattress.

"How did things go with Dr. Wyatt?"

He stood, finally, reaching his arms way up over his head, pulling his body up onto his tiptoes, lengthening himself out until he started to shake and stumble from overextension. Then he pushed his arms in front of him against the hospital bed and started to stretch his calves. All while he continued to stare at the window with a kind of not all there haze.

He sighed. "It went okay." 

"Is he angry?" Meredith prodded.

Derek shrugged. "Not at me." 

"Okay…" Meredith swallowed. She wanted to chalk this up to tiredness. She did. But this behavior was just too strange. She wrapped her arms around his waist and rested her cheek against the gap between his shoulder blades. "Did you get stuck with a peer counselor yet? I hope not Sydney." 

She tried to picture Derek attempting to get along with the heal with love, hug-happy doctor and shuddered at the thought. That probably would have been very, very bad, had it happened. She hoped the Chief had the good sense to stick Derek with someone a little less… bubbly. With his mood swings lately and his low tolerance for tension, bubbly would have been the new fad to replace nails on a chalkboard.

"No, not Dr. Heron," he said. His voice vibrated in his chest, rumbling against her. He gripped her arms and stood there, not making any move to leave, but not making any move to suggest to her that he particularly enjoyed the embrace. 

"Well," she asked, trying to get him to say something, anything that was longer than a sentence. "How did it go?"

His grip around her wrists tightened. He turned around and stared at her, a dark, tumultuous look consuming his gaze in the space of a breath.

"That bad?" she asked.

He didn't answer.

For now, she gave up. She didn't have the energy to pull teeth. She just wanted to go. "Did you want to go change?" she asked. "I can meet you at the car."

She started to pull away from him, but he wouldn't release her arms. "No," he said, almost choking on the word as it spilled from him in a sudden swell of passion. "No, I want to go home."

Well, at least they agreed, she thought. He looked at her with desperate eyes.

"Okay," she replied, frowning as his gaze threatened to peel off not just her clothes but also her skin. "What's gotten into you?" she asked. She wrapped one arm around his waist and they headed back to the lobby interlocked.

He didn't answer her, but something dark and stormy definitely hovered somewhere in his head, waiting to tumble out of him. Tension locked his frame, tension that his copious stretching didn't seem to have helped with. The closer they got to the exit, the tighter his grip on her shoulder became, until she clued him in with a small, "Ow." 

He released her in a shot. "Sorry," he muttered as they pushed out into the dark, water-dusted air, but then his hand was back, and his grip clenched millimeter by aching millimeter. Wetness saturated the air, drenching them in a damp sheen as they moved out into the parking lot.

"Ow, Derek," she said again.

He sucked in a breath and let her go. "Sorry. I'm sorry." 

"What the hell happened today, Derek?" she snapped.

"Nothing," he said. "Beautiful craniotomy, by the way."

"Oh, no. You're not changing the subject. What the hell, Derek? What's with the clingy?" 

"Nothing. Nothing's with the clingy, I—" He stared at her for a moment, his mouth opening and closing in a little hitching motion that said he was floundering for words and failing. He stared, long and pleading, and then he groaned in frustration and fumbled with his keys when no words came.

"You shouldn't drive, Derek," she muttered, but the protest felt like a token one. She closed her eyes as the tiredness swept in behind them like a riptide. Derek was being all weird, she was exhausted, and she didn't want to do this right now. She didn't think she could handle pulling him back together if he flipped out right now, as much as it pained her to realize. Not after this shift, the surgery, worrying about finding Derek for a half hour, and a whole host of other ugly feelings that seemed to suddenly be popping up. Honestly, with all of that piling up, she was happy he was driving.

"Look who's talking," he said, no bite in his tone, seeming to realize her heart really wasn't behind the objection. "At least I've slept."

He settled behind the driver's seat and started readjusting everything as she slipped in on the passenger side and leaned her head against window. He turned the key in the ignition, and the car purred into idle after a few chugs. He looked at her as she clipped her seatbelt on. He did the open-close thing with his mouth again, but after a minute, he gave up. Again. He put his head down on the steering wheel as he sighed.

"Derek?" she asked, concern welling back up, pushing the tiredness away. He really was acting bizarre…

When he looked back up at her, his expression was a veritable wreck of emotions. "I'm such an ass," he said.

"Um," she said, swallowing. "What?" Of all the things that might have been going through his head right then, this was not one that she had considered. 

"Me," he enunciated. "I'm an ass."

"Allow me to repeat…" Meredith said, confusion sweeping in and taking all the spare seats in her head. "Um. What?" 

"You've let me languish all this time, doubting you, doubting if I could ever trust you again, and I… I took it. I just let you let me. I'm…"

The confusion pulled out popcorn and started laughing, laughing at her while she sat there staring at Derek, a sudden slip of fear tearing through her. This sounded kind of like a goodbye talk. And she didn't think she could deal with a goodbye talk. Not from Derek. Not now. Not after everything.

"Derek, what on earth is this about? You're kind of scaring me," she said as her breaths started to come in small, uneven pants. She couldn't take this right now. She couldn't.

"I don't think I ever told you how sorry I am," he said. 

"Sorry for what?" she snapped. "Derek, I'm really not following this line of discussion. Help a panicking girl out, here."

"Everything. I'm sorry for everything." 

"You're not breaking up with me, are you?" she asked, exasperated, her voice cracking. "Because if you are…"

That finally drew him out of his weird rambling. He jerked in his seat. His knuckles curled around the steering wheel, and the fake leather squeaked in protest as he wrung it in his twisting grasp. His jaw dropped, and he stared at her like she'd slapped him. "What? No," he said as he drew in a shaky breath and pulled his hands away from the steering wheel to claw through his hair. "No. Jesus, Meredith, of course not," he added.

She frowned. She didn't think she'd ever seen him this… discomfited. "Well, when you go all crazy-talking on me about being sorry and being an ass and all this other stuff that makes me into this clueless pile of… whatever… What else am I supposed to think?"

A vague, haunted expression tugged his face into a mask of upset, and he chuckled, wry and low and far from amused. "I'm doing a pretty bad job at this, aren't I?" He looked at her helplessly. 

"Well, considering I still have no clue what we're discussing, I'm thinking yeah. Just a little, Derek," she replied. "Want to try again, maybe from something resembling an actual beginning?"

He sighed and ran his hands through his hair again. His whole body twitched as the first sigh was followed with another. Mounting energy pulsed along his limbs, and she watched in confused amazement as he started to tremble with it. He stared out into the dark, wet parking lot, his eyes glittering as the streetlights reflected back on his pupils.

"Look," he said after a long, agonizing pause. "This whole thing, this whole year… Back before Addison showed up, and I never told you… Never told you about her. And then when I just threw everything we were building away to go try things again with her, even though on every level of my brain except the one that was frozen in fear, I knew I didn't want to, because I loved you, and I didn't love Addison, not anymore… I knew it, Mere, and I still…" He stopped for a moment, swallowing as he looked at her, looked her deep in the eyes. His whole face was a crumple of worry and sadness and unsettled, ugly things. "It wasn't… It wasn't fair to you. Not at all. And then I tried to drag you into a friendship you didn't want, just to service my own desperate need to have you around. You were trying so hard to move on. And I just… I sabotaged all of it for you, Meredith. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for all of it."

Silence spread between them in a thickening cloud. A light rain had started somewhere in the middle of Derek's confession, and it hit the roof of the car with a quiet, distant pat, pat, pat. Derek stared at her, looking for all the world like he'd just given her his heart in a box and was expecting her to toss it back at him with a knife in it.

"Why are you telling me this now?" she asked, her voice low and wary and wondering.

He blinked, his posture still stuck in a rigid lock of tension. "Someone pointed out to me that you're basically in the same boat I'm in, and that I'm not being fair to you."

"What boat?" 

"Just… You trust me. You've been doing it since you took me back, despite all the crap, the endless crap I shoveled at you before. And this whole time I've basically been telling you I don't give you the same benefit, and you still…" 

"Still…" she prodded as her eyes began to prick up with tears. 

"How can you just…?" He paused again, as if the thoughts were stumbling somewhere on his tongue, unable to jump into the air. When he looked at her again, his face was grim and his mouth was set in a pale, tortured frown. "You put yourself all into this thing again, you put yourself all in, even when it's become obvious I haven't been. You keep giving me your life, Meredith, and I never... Never really did the same in return." 

"Derek…"

"So, I'm sorry, Meredith," he said. "That's what I'm saying. Whatever you want, I'm in. From now on." 

Silence. She shifted in her seat. The leather squeaked. She stared at him, stared at him wondering when she'd fallen asleep and started having this beautiful dream. She swallowed again, and her voice creaked out of her mouth, low, straining, "Whatever I want?" 

"Yes," he said. "I know you want to deal with now first. But… marriage, a house, whatever, Meredith. You set the pace, but I'm in it all the way."

She blinked. The world went blurry on her. Shapes became amoebic and glowed crazy colors as the street lights flared and bled all over the view. Tears spilled out, and she shook uncontrollably as they came falling, tumbling, stampeding from her in waves. "I already have what I want, Derek," she sniffled. "You just gave it." 

"Meredith…" he said, his voice a sigh that placed her name on an altar.

"Shut up, Derek. I'm trying to be speechless and swoony here, and you're not helping." 

"You're crying…" 

"Well, duh!"

He smiled at her. He reached across and rubbed her face with the soft pads of his thumbs. "I didn't mean to make you cry." 

"They're happy tears, Derek," she said. She brushed her hands across her cheeks, meeting his fingers and gripping them in her own. "Happy, joy, whatever." 

"I notice how you didn't refute my whole spiel about being an ass." 

"Honesty is a good policy, Derek," she said with another sniffle. "I admire it."

He grinned. "Hah. Hah. Hah," he added in a wry, self-deprecating tone. 

The rain pattered on the roof and dripped down over the windshield in curling tendrils. She leaned across the parking brake, leaned into his shoulder and laid her head against him. Warmth from his skin bled into her. He shifted and pulled her into his arms. It wasn't exactly comfortable, bent over the parking brake like that, but she just didn't care anymore.

"It's water under the thing, Derek," she whispered. "Forget about it." 

"I really love you," he said.

"I love you, too," she whispered.

"Want to go home now?" he asked after a long silence fell between them and glutted on the moments.

"No," she said.

"No?" 

"How about we just enjoy the moment, for, you know, a moment."

"Okay."

They curled up together and sat watching the rain.


	24. Chapter 24

He watched, leaning against the doorjamb, his arms crossed over his chest as Meredith, George, Izzie, Cristina, and Alex hurried to get ready for the day. Meredith slammed her locker door shut and sighed. "T.G.I.F. is all I have to say," she said. "This has been a long, long week."

"You actually got Saturday off? Lucky bitch, I'm jealous," Alex said as he yanked his stethoscope out of his locker and placed it around his neck. "I've had to work the last two, and I have to work this one."

Cristina clucked her tongue as she fiddled with her watch. "She's flown solo for three surgeries this week. I'm the one who's jealous."

"They weren't solo. There was some extreme coaching involved," Meredith protested. She started jerking her lab coat down, as if she didn't think it was straight enough or something. To him, she looked perfect, though.

Derek couldn't help but smile. Those surgeries had definitely been solo. Dr. Weller, encouraged by that first craniotomy on Monday, had been giving her a little more room to spread her wings that week. And Meredith, well, she was just one of those people who was far too modest for her own good sometimes.

"How's Dr. Shepherd?" George interjected.

"He's fine. I think," Derek said as he shifted, finally making his presence known. He'd slowly gotten used to people asking, over and over, enough that when he said, "Thank you for asking," it was almost a reflexive thing, though it didn't mean he liked the question.

All five interns glanced up at him, betraying varying degrees of surprise. George and Alex appeared neutral beyond a general layer of curiosity. And Cristina, well, who knew what she was thinking. Her face was the usual stone mask. Izzie kind of darted her gaze away within moments of registering the sight of him, as she'd been doing all week in his presence since Meredith had yelled at her. He was going to have to talk to her at some point, tell her he wasn't going to bite or break apart on her. At least she'd been taking the rules to heart, though. The bedroom had remained solidly in his and Meredith's possession for the whole week. Only once had Izzie even approached, and that had been after much apologizing and a very quiet, very hesitant knock.

Meredith, who'd looked positively exhausted before as she'd pulled on her lab coat, turned in the direction of his voice, and lit up with a gorgeous smile when he met eyes with her. "Hey," she said, her face glowing. "What brings you down here to our internly Hell?"

He grinned. "Well, I'd love to score some points and say it was you… but—"

Someone behind him cleared her throat. He darted into the room and stepped to the side as Dr. Bailey sauntered into the room, tapping her pen on her clipboard as she grinned, sort of like how he pictured a maniacal drill sergeant might grin before sending his troops to do latrine duty with toothbrushes. Dr. Bailey really got far too much enjoyment out of her reputation for being a hard ass.

"Excuse me," she said, clearing her throat as she looked pointedly at him. He shuffled over to stand next to Meredith, not really sure what exactly was expected of him. When he'd been an intern, his resident had been much, much more… buddy-buddy. And he'd followed the same model when he'd had his own interns to boss around. Somehow, he couldn't really picture Dr. Bailey knocking back beers after hours with this crew, though. Or any crew, really.

"Yang," Dr. Bailey said. "You're with Dr. Burke. Karev, clinic. O'Malley, Dr. Montgomery. Stevens, Dr. Sloane. Shepherd, Grey, pit."

Everyone stopped to look at Derek as perplexed, amused gazes plastered across their faces when it sunk in that an extra name had been included in the usual spiel over who went where. He shrugged. "The paperwork excuse finally wore thin," Derek said.

"Good luck, dude. You'll need it." Alex said and clapped him on the shoulder before he sauntered out and disappeared into the hallway. Izzie, Cristina, and George followed him out, all chuckling.

Dr. Bailey cleared her throat again. "Grey, you go ahead. Shepherd, sit." 

He sat on the narrow bench, watching Meredith go with a mournful stare. This couldn't be good. "You're enjoying this far too much, Miranda," he said.

She raised an eyebrow. "I'm still evaluating you."

He smirked. "Nazi."

"Arrogant fool," she shot back.

"Touché," he said with a flourish and a nod.

"Well?" she prompted. She sat down on the bench next to him after glancing around to make sure the locker room had cleared out.

He looked at his hands. "I'm…" He swallowed. "Doing better."

That week, he'd slowly been building back up to Meredith's schedule, though he'd been cheating and taking a lot of naps in the on-call rooms. Since Monday, things had slowly gotten easier. Easier, now that people had stopped quizzing him all the time about his state of mind, about whether he was okay or not. On Tuesday, he'd barely felt safe outside of his office, and even when he'd sat hidden behind stacks of paper, trying to look dreadfully busy and unapproachable, people had still knocked and come in to ask how he was. On Wednesday, he'd made his first trip for coffee without getting intercepted by well-wishers. On Thursday, he'd made an entire round of the hospital before somebody asked how he was doing. It was good for his peace of mind that he was finally becoming a routine sight again, one that didn't warrant more than a friendly hello or perhaps a pertinent medical question. He just wanted people to stop staring at him like he was a ticking time bomb, which honestly, he didn't know whether he believed was true or not.

Dr. Bailey put a hand on his knee, light, just enough to show she was there, just enough to breach the borders of the professional and into the territory of friendship. "How much better?" 

"What you told me before…" Derek said. "It's helped. We talked."

"So, I don't have to worry about Dr. Grey?" 

"She's happy. I intend to help her stay that way."

"Do you think you're ready to cut again?" she asked.

That was a loaded question. He stared down at his hands, surgeon's hands. Just one week ago, he'd watched them, unable to control them as the shakes had overwhelmed him. These were hands that had thrown a crash cart to the ground, hands that had flattened another doctor against the wall, both motions that were far from precise, far from surgical. They were motions that were violent. Exhaustion and stress and fear drove him to make his hands do violent things. He clenched his fingers into fists and stared with an oddly morbid fascination as they did exactly what he told them to do.

He sighed as he let them drop back to his lap. "I don't know. I--"

Dr. Bailey cut him off and moved the hand that rested on his knee up to his shoulder. "Then you're not ready," she said, and squeezed her fingers over his scrubs. "Go join Grey in the pit, but I'd better not hear complaints about my two favorite interns snogging over sutures."

He scoffed. "I haven't been an intern in nearly a decade, Miranda." 

"Well, you're an intern now until I say you're not."

"Fine, fine," he muttered as he stood up. "I'm going to have fun torturing you when I'm reinstated though."

She snorted. "You won't torture me."

"Why not?" he asked. "You don't think I'd make a good Nazi-in-training? You're my idol, you know." He winked at her, but she was immune.

She glared and raised her index finger. "A, it would ruin your dreamy image. Only so much spin doctoring will keep that around after you start yelling at poor, defenseless residents like myself. And B," she said as she raised her middle finger, "You're too scared of me to torture me."

"Well," he said with a smirk. "I suppose there is that."

He stood there for a moment, watching her, until she glared at him and snapped, "So. Does my time seem like it needs to be wasted?" 

"Um…" he stuttered under the weight of her gaze. "No."

She brushed her hands out in front of her as though she were shaking water off them. "So, scoot. Get lost. Goodbye." 

"Yes, Ma'am," he said with a mock salute. She glared some more, and he laughed as he left, laughed when he heard her muttering about stubborn, arrogant fools, laughed when she shouted something down the hall after him, something about him being an overgrown, haughty man-child who thought he was sex on a stick. A few people looked up as he fled, laughing and chortling all the while, but he didn't care. He just grinned at them, and they went back to whatever their business was. He broke into a jog after he rounded the hallway corner, and moments later, he caught up with Meredith, who stood waiting at the elevator, hands clasped at her elbows, looking beautiful and determined to stare at the lighted floor numbers as they counted down with painful slowness.

She raised an eyebrow and glanced sidelong at him as he sauntered up and playfully imitated her stance. "Sutures, Derek?" she asked.

Derek frowned. "It's better than doing labs, I guess. Are sutures punishment? I couldn't tell."

The elevator dinged, the doors trundled open, and they wandered in to the cavernous space. People crowded around, bumping into them, crushing around them in a bustle, pushing them into each other. He swallowed and wrapped his arms around her, not sure whether he was steadying her as she wobbled, or if he was steadying himself to withstand the pulse of the crowd.

"Nah," she grinned, looking up at him. "Usually one of us gets stuck on it. We tend to rotate. I was long overdue." 

"Oh, good," he said, forcing himself to live with the crush for just a moment longer. "I'd hate to think I've angered the Nazi." 

The elevator dinged again, announcing their floor. They both stepped out. Derek sighed, relieved to be away from the veritable clog of people. He took a moment to close his eyes and breathe. Meredith waited, not saying anything.

"So," Meredith asked after he'd re-gathered himself and they started walking to the pit. "Who's dealing with the neurology department right now?" 

"The Chief pawned everything off on Dr. Weller while I recuperate." He put the word recuperate in air quotes. He shook his head. That made it sound like a disease, or some sort of thing that would have a definitive end. What he'd told Miranda had been the truth. He didn't know when he would be ready again, didn't know if he was ready now, to start taking people's lives into his own hands again. Not after everything that'd happened.

"Hence the sudden shortage of paperwork?" Meredith asked. 

"Yep," he said. "And I finished up writing the two pending research papers that I had in the queue on Thursday." 

"That's great." 

"Yeah. So, how do you usually do this?" he asked as he looked around. Curtains four, five, and six looked occupied. He couldn't remember the last time he'd done this, couldn't remember the last time he'd been down to the ER area without a list of consults waiting to be dealt with, a list that said move here, do that next, go to this place. Now, his only goal was the location itself. His workday was defined as the pit. It felt… oddly scary. 

"Well, usually, we interns fight tooth and claw for the good, bloody ones. But I'll let you take first pick. What with your decade of seniority and all, I figure you've earned a perk or two."

He snorted. "I can think of much better perks. Do you have your pager on you?"

"That's not a perk today, smartass," she said with a grin. "So? Go to it, boss." She pulled up a chart from the pile and lightly thwacked him with it.

He only managed half a dodge, and he turned to grin at her sudden boldness. She looked back at him, an innocent, twinkling gaze plastered across her face. "You're just making me want to beep you," he said with a sly smile as he picked up his own chart from the stack.

She chuckled and settled back on her elbows against the countertop, waiting for him to pick something. She held her chart out for him to see, but he stuck with his own. Curtain four. Hmmm.

A wail pealed out from curtain four, followed by frantic, whispered shushing noises. "Welcome to the pit," Meredith said with a grin.

"Yeah, yeah. Hopefully I remember this stuff," he muttered. He skimmed the chart, and then walked over to the curtain, taking a deep breath. Here went nothing… He willed the tension down into the pit of his stomach and let it sit there, coiling.

"Hello, I'm Dr. Shepherd," he said over the piercing noise of sobbing as he pulled the curtain back. "Kelly and Richard Donnelly?" He asked as he pulled up a stool. A young blonde woman stood with a small boy, probably around six, clutched in her arms. She had a bloody rag jammed up against the little boy's temple. Said little boy was in the process of crying enough to fill a small ocean.

"It's Richie," the woman corrected as she rocked the boy in her arms. "You'll be fine, sweetie. The nice doctor is here." Richie sniffled and quieted a little.

"Can you lie him back on the table, Mrs. Donnelly?" Derek said as he snapped his gloves on.

"Hi, Richie, it looks like you've been having an active morning," he said as the mother put the kid on the table and laid him down. Derek reached out gently and tilted Richie's face toward him so he could see the damage.

Richie nodded, silent, tears leaking from his wide, fear-filled, brown eyes.

Derek glanced up, noticing Meredith dealing with an elderly woman in the next area over, what had been curtain number five. She gave him a smile, and he looked back at the kid.

"So, what kind of fun were you getting into?" Derek asked as he assessed the amount of blood on the rag. Whatever was under the towel was a bleeder, all right, but it didn't seem too bad, not for the location of the cut.

A smile curled across Richie's lips. "Riding my bike!"

"I had a bike once," Derek said, grinning back. "It's where I got this awesome scar. It makes the girls go wild, you know." He pointed to the faded line that ran along his forehead. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Meredith suppressing laughter as she taped up a cut on the old woman's arm. 

"Girls…" Richie made a scrunched up, disgusted face, and he stuck out his tongue. "Ew."

"Yeah, well, I'm sure you'll appreciate it later," Derek said. "Girls like the whole rugged thing. Keep that in mind for the future."

He peeled back the rag. A jagged wound about two inches long clawed its way down the boy's left temple. It started to gush a little as he watched, but overall, it was extremely shallow, there was no swelling at all, and, so far, the boy seemed perfectly coherent. He took out his penlight and flashed it in Richie's eyes. The pupils reacted normally.

"Can you follow the light?" he asked.

Richie looked to the left and the right, following the pen as Derek moved it back and forth.

"How long ago did he do this?" he asked Mrs. Donnelly.

She shrugged. "Three hours? We've been waiting forever, and it took about a half hour just to drive here."

"Has he shown any signs of dizziness? Confusion?" 

"No."

He nodded. No concussion symptoms after three hours was a very good sign.

"Is it bad?" Mrs. Donnelly asked. "It's bad isn't it? I'm so upset. I just looked away for one second, and he managed to plow into a parked car…"

Derek shook his head. "Oh, no, Mrs. Donnelly," he said. "Head wounds like this tend to bleed for much more than they're worth. This looks relatively minor. But it will need stitches. Does he have any allergies I should be aware of?"

"No," Mrs. Donnelly said. "None."

He pulled out a suture kit from the under-bed storage area and started lining everything up on the small instrument tray. He disinfected and cleaned the wound, much to Richie's dismay. "It's okay, Richie. That was the worst of it. I'm just going to put some stuff on the cut so that it won't hurt at all. Ready?"

Richie nodded, and Derek quickly swabbed the wound with topical anesthetic.

"Now, see, this is where the cool part starts. I'm going to stitch this closed, and then it won't bleed any more." He raised the needle over the kid's temple, feeling oddly nervous about it, despite the countless stitches he'd done in his lifetime. He was a surgeon, for crying out loud. He could do sutures. Richie got one look at the needle and his eyes widened, which didn't help ease Derek's mind at all.

"So, what kind of bike do you have?" Derek prodded, trying to distract him.

Richie regarded him for a moment. "A blue one," Richie said, his voice tiny and faint.

"Really?" Derek asked as he began to stitch. Richie didn't even twitch as the first stitch went in. "It just so happens that blue is my favorite color. I bet blue is your favorite color, too. You look like a blue person to me." 

"I'm not blue!" Richie protested with a giggle. He jerked a little, and Derek paused for a moment, tense, his jaw clenching, until Richie resettled. Fine, it was fine.

Derek shrugged. "I don't know…" he continued after Richie went still again. "This could be your secret identity. How do I know you're not really blue?"

Richie grinned.

"Who's your favorite superhero?" Derek asked. Almost done, just another half-inch…

"Spider-Man!"

Derek frowned. "I kind of like Batman, myself."

Meredith coughed. Everyone looked up. "Sorry," she muttered. Derek thought he caught an under the breath, "Holy scalpels," but he couldn't be sure.

Derek smirked at her and looked back and Richie. He tied off the end and grinned at the kid. "There we go. All done," he said and squeezed the boy's shoulder. He looked up at Mrs. Donnelly. "Mrs. Donnelly, you'll need to bring him back in five days to get the stitches checked, but other than that, he should be good to go, on or off the bike. Just watch him carefully for the next twenty-four hours. If he shows any symptoms like dizziness, sudden drowsiness, or confusion, you need to bring him back immediately, but I really doubt that will be an issue." 

"Thanks, Dr. Shepherd," she replied with a smile as he pulled off his gloves and tossed them into the biohazard bin.

After Kelly Donnelly finished filling out her paperwork and left with a rambunctious Richie in tow, he started to shake a little. He folded his hands behind his head and took deep, cleansing breaths as he bent over his knees, forcing himself to relax. He'd just dealt with his first patient since his meltdown, and it hadn't been that bad at all, despite the blood and a traumatized little six-year-old. It had been… nice, he decided. He leaned back up in his chair and let himself just sit there, paused, assessing, on the brink of something. An empty ache that he hadn't even realized was there began to fade into a warm, light undercurrent of self-satisfaction. And without even realizing it, he found himself staring at Meredith, staring and grinning like a fool. Meredith, who had also just finished with her first patient, the elderly woman, grinned back at him, but instead of looking away after a few, blushing seconds like she usually did, she just kept grinning.

"What?" he asked.

"Nothing," she said. She fidgeted with strand of her hair. "Well…" she stuttered. "Nothing."

"Seriously, what?" 

"It's just… You're going to make an awesome dad, someday."

He swallowed as a flush of heat overwhelmed him. He hadn't ever asked Meredith how she felt about kids. Actually, he'd just assumed, given her mother and father and general family experience, that she flat out wouldn't even consider it, and he would never expect or want her to have one then, anyway, not while she was still an intern. And… Well, he'd just never asked her about it. She stared back at him, her eyes serious, and twinkling, and beautiful, and sexy.

"Yeah?" he asked after several false starts. He tried desperately not to let the world fall out from under him as he digested the subtle promise in her words. Somewhere along the line, he failed, and he sighed and smiled like a lovesick teenager as a lightheaded, giddy sensation overtook him.

She was still smiling when the world came back. "Yeah," she said after a long, long silence. "I think so."

He beamed all the way to curtain six, which he pulled back to reveal a rather drunk biker named Ed, who had a wicked-looking piece of glass sticking out of his cheek. The day only got more interesting from there.


	25. Chapter 25

Meredith sat sandwiched between Cristina and Izzie, with George and Alex serving as bookends for the group. She tapped the top page of her notepad with her pencil, tap, tap, tap, as she bit her lip. The large amphitheater was starting to fill. They'd gotten there early. The lights were still on and dim, and the crowd rumbled as it grew. They'd been watching for several minutes, and there was still no sign of Derek.

Izzie gripped her hand. "He'll be fine, Meredith. He'll be fine."

Meredith nodded. "I didn't even get a chance to talk to him this morning. Everything's been so busy. I hope—" 

"He'll be fine, Meredith," George said. "Stop worrying."

She glanced down at her blank notepad. A week and a half. A blissful week and a half since he'd come back to work. He still hadn't been allowed back into the OR to do surgeries. Dr. Bailey was having all sorts of fun making him do basic scut work and stuff usually relegated to interns. Meredith had actually done sutures with him all day in the pit on the Friday of the week before. He hadn't complained. Actually, after he'd gotten into the swing of things, he'd looked like he rather enjoyed going back to the basics. She imagined it was sort of a mental vacation for him. And he was one of those people who had such a wonderful bedside manner, you just knew they were meant to be a doctor. She'd had fun watching him interact with people from all ages and walks of life, something she didn't get much of an opportunity to do when he was Mr. Top Neurosurgeon.

He still had difficulties from time to time, but they were getting less and less frequent. He'd had a nightmare, a really bad one, that weekend, but other than that, he'd been sleeping long and well. His staying power at shifts had built back up until he was matching her hour for internly hour, though he still seemed a lot more run-down by the end of the day than he should have been. She'd asked him why on earth he was even trying to keep her hours, but he'd just smirked and said it was good character building.

"Did any of you catch him this morning? I can't believe I didn't even get a chance to wish him luck," she muttered.

She'd let him sleep in that morning, knowing he would need all the help he could get. She'd kissed him goodbye and left for her ridiculously early shift, but he hadn't woken up enough from the kiss to do more than mutter something incoherent at her. She'd been planning to catch him at the hospital, just for a few minutes to chat, make sure he was okay, and wish him well, but that plan had gone to hell when a bad car accident had had all the interns floundering around in the pit, trying to triage everyone. The only reason they had been able to get away at all was Dr. Bailey, who had barked at Meredith to stop moping around and just go to the damned conference, and to the rest of the crew to stop moping about Meredith and just go to the damned conference with her. This was one of those things that would probably be amusing in retrospect, but at the moment, she just felt sick. Sick with worry.

She started to scribble on her notepad, just loose, meandering lines, until she thought too hard and the tip of her pencil snapped. She sighed and swept the broken tip away, staring at the mess of graphite her pencil had left all across her paper. It looked like a cyclone or something.

"I talked to him a few hours ago, Meredith. He seemed a little antsy, but honestly, it's not like he was preparing to walk the plank or anything," Izzie said, a smile plastered across her face in what was probably supposed to be a reassuring expression.

"If he wasn't so great at hiding things, that might actually make me feel better," Meredith mumbled. "The fact that he was antsy at all is bad. Very bad."

Izzie shrugged helplessly at her. Alex leaned over and said, "Meredith, stop worrying about it. Seriously, you're making me sick just watching you."

Meredith swallowed. "Sorry," she whispered.

The lights dimmed further, swathing the audience in a dark, barely-there glow, and Meredith sank down into her seat. Derek came vaulting down the aisle and took a seat up front, just before the rumble became quiet and the audience settled in. She wasn't able to get a good enough look at him to do any assessing. But it couldn't be good that he'd practically been late to his own roasting, could it? She stuck the pencil in her mouth and started to chew.

"That's gross, Meredith," Cristina whispered.

Meredith put the pencil down and frowned.

Chief Webber stood up behind the podium and cleared his throat. "Patient 49382, a twenty-seven year old female, died from an epidural hematoma resultant from a head-on car collision." 

A mutter of voices began as the audience processed this, and Meredith hunkered even further down. Please, she prayed, let this be over fast.

"The patient was received in the emergency room," Chief Webber continued. "She presented with dementia and was taken for a CT scan to assess damages. After her scan was determined to be clean, she was taken to the OR for repair of an intertrochanteric fracture. Dr. Zachary will be presenting on behalf of Dr. Wyatt, who was unable to attend today."

Meredith sighed. Dr. Wyatt, who'd been the one to actually kill the patient, wasn't even there. That just figured. The universe's propensity for being completely unfair really just sucked sometimes. She sighed again.

"Just relax, Mere. Nothing bad has happened yet," Cristina said.

Dr. Zachary stood up a few seats down from where Derek had melted into the crowd up front. Meredith watched the heavy-set, bearded man as he ambled up to the podium. He had red cheeks, fat fingers, and an old, crinkled, jovial look. He pushed round spectacles up onto the bridge of his nose as he cleared his throat and leaned into the microphone.

"Dude, it's Santa Claus," Alex said with a chuckle.

"Alex!" Izzie hissed.

"Not funny," Meredith said.

"Dr. Wyatt is on sabbatical for the next few weeks," Dr. Zachary said after taking a deep breath. His voice was deep and rolling, and he had just a hint of an accent from… somewhere… unusual. Dr. Zachary continued, "As the attending in charge of Dr. Wyatt when this incident occurred, I will be presenting the facts of this case. I've reviewed them with Dr. Wyatt thoroughly and feel I can provide an adequate review of what happened. Are there any questions?"

A resident in row three stood. "Is it correct that the CT scan was not reviewed by a member of our neurosurgical staff?"

Dr. Zachary shook his head. "Not until the patient was already in the operating room." 

"Why wasn't a member of the neurosurgical staff consulted immediately?" an attending in row seven asked.

Dr. Zachary coughed. "Dementia commonly presents with hip fractures." 

"But the victim was twenty-seven," Callie said. She sat in the middle of a gaggle of orthopedic staff down in rows four and five. "Dementia in conjunction with a hip fracture is generally associated with elderly victims." 

The microphone squealed as Dr. Zachary put his hand on it. He cleared his throat. "Yes. My resident improperly assimilated certain symptoms of hip injury into his mental catalogue as routine ones." 

"You mean you taught him badly," Callie snapped back.

George leaned over. "That's my wife," he whispered with a grin.

"Dude, shut up," Alex shot back.

Meredith sighed. "How about both of you shut up."

Dr. Zachary's cheeks reddened. "It could be construed that way, yes," he said, maintaining his calm in what Meredith considered to be a remarkable feat.

She swallowed. God, she hoped Derek wouldn't have to deal with this sort of questioning. This was brutal… Don't call Dr. Shepherd up, she whispered mentally to the audience. He didn't do anything except have a really, really bad day, damn it. She thought it hard, furiously as she gripped her pencil and rotated it in her clenched fingers. Don't call him, don't call him, don't call him.

"Dr. Shepherd reviewed the CT scans after the patient was wheeled into the OR," Dr. Zachary said after a pause. "Dr. Shepherd, can you tell us about the scans?" 

"That rat bastard!" Cristina hissed. "He's totally shifting the discussion so we look for someone else to blame."

"Damn it," Meredith sighed.

"He'll be fine, Meredith," George whispered.

"I guess it's evil Santa Claus," Alex amended.

"Alex!" Izzie hissed.

Meredith swallowed as Derek stood, slowly, glacially, like he really was getting ready to walk the plank. He was too far away and it was too dark for her to gauge him, gauge his expression, but his slumped, tense posture alone said he was not happy. He trudged up onto the steps and wandered out onto the stage. He blinked at the lights, and then when Dr. Zachary gestured him forward, he took his place at the podium.

"The CT scan showed a very small cranial bleed," Derek said.

A resident popped up in row four. "Was it something that would be easily missed?"

Derek paused. "Not by a member of my staff, no." 

"But by a member of another department?" perky row-four said. 

"It's very likely that the scan would have looked clean to someone without proper training. Yes," Derek replied with a nod.

Meredith clenched her fingers. This was okay. This was okay so far. This was all matter-of-fact stuff. Derek could deal with that. 

Dr. Zachary shoved forward past Derek and spoke into the microphone. "After you saw the CT, you immediately attempted to relieve intracranial pressure by inserting a burr hole with a neurosurgical drill. Is that correct, Dr. Shepherd?" 

Okay, this was getting closer to badness. Meredith glared at Dr. Zachary. He looked like such a nice man. How could he be so… Cruel?

"Yes," Derek said. "It took several minutes to get everything properly sterilized and prepared, but immediately after that, I made a burr hole in the patient's skull over the area of the hematoma."

"Why weren't the proper tools prepared?" an attending in row eight asked.

Derek shrugged. "It was supposed to be surgery to repair a hip. Not a brain." 

Meredith swallowed. Okay. Okayokayokay. He was okay so far. Though she found herself suddenly wishing she'd picked seats that were closer to the stage. Closer to the stage so that she could see him better, actually identify the expressions on his face. Maybe close enough so that he could see her in return, sitting there in support. She closed her eyes and tried not to be nervous for him, standing there in the spotlight under the heated stares of hundreds of pairs of eyes, but it was a futile effort. Coils of nerves writhed in her stomach, and she couldn't stop them.

"Do you think your subsequent… episode… could have affected the procedure in any way? Caused the patient to die?" 

Her eyes snapped open. She glanced around wildly, but she couldn't get a view of whoever had asked the question. "Crap," she whispered as a wave of muttering pulsed through the room, undulating, writhing.

Izzie hugged her. Cristina snapped, "It's fine, Meredith." George and Alex remained silent.

Derek stood frozen at the lectern. His hands gripped the sides. The sound of him clearing his throat, awkward, uncomfortable, ratcheted through the room, courtesy of the microphone.

Chief Webber barreled up to the podium as the rumbling crowd reached a fever pitch and Derek just stood there. "The autopsy showed that the burr hole was textbook. Dr. Shepherd didn't do any damage to the patient, and that's been confirmed by two of our best pathologists," he said. 

She heaved a sigh of relief that the Chief had intervened. Maybe this wouldn't be so--

"But still, the man trashed an operating room," whoever had spoken up before spoke again. Meredith couldn't see. Couldn't see who it was. "Surely his obviously disturbed state of mind could have affected reaction time? Prep time? What if he'd started a minute sooner?" 

"Crap, crap, crap," Meredith whispered.

"Dr. Shepherd assessed the damage within seconds of receiving the CT scans. I don't see how he could have been faster," Chief Webber replied. 

"How long did it take him to respond to the page?" mysterious inquisitor continued. 

"About seven minutes," Chief Webber said. 

"Seven minutes for a 911 page? Dr. Shepherd, what were you doing leading up to the page? Why did you take so long to get there?" inquisitor asked. 

Another rumble of whispering and commentary moved in a wave through the room. Oh, god, Meredith thought. This was even **worse** than she'd thought it would be. Izzie sank in the seat next to her. "I'm sorry, Meredith," she squeaked.

"Just shut up," Meredith snapped. "I'm trying not to freak out."

Chief Webber relinquished the podium to Derek, who stood there like a man before a firing squad. He ran his hands through his hair, a sure sign that he was in the process of wilting under the pressure. Meredith couldn't stand it. She leaned over and gripped Cristina's arm and turned away. She just couldn't watch.

"Ow, Meredith," Cristina whispered, but it was half-hearted, and she made no move to remove Meredith's clenched fingers.

"I was having a discussion with a fellow doctor," Derek said after the rumble died down. His voice was a little quivery. Just a little.

Obnoxious inquisitor didn't stop. "Meaning the illustrious Dr. Grey." 

Whispers floated through the room. Heads turned. Meredith blushed and swallowed as the entire room seemed to notice she was sitting there at once.

"Ow, Meredith," Cristina hissed.

Meredith forced herself to let go.

"Yes," Derek snapped in a sudden, panicked way. A long silence intervened. "I was having a discussion with Dr. Grey." 

"We all heard about that discussion," inquisitor scoffed. Chuckles dotted the room, and Meredith saw red. "Did it occur to you that you should have passed the page on to another member of your staff?"

More rumbling tore through the room.

"Not at the time," Derek mumbled, looking down at the podium.

Meredith shot to her feet, but Izzie and Cristina yanked her back down into her seat and held her shoulders in clenching grasps. "Don't make this worse for him," Cristina whispered.

Dr. Zachary cleared his throat and intervened. "Is it your opinion that seven minutes could have saved the patient?" 

"I don't know," Derek said. "The bleed was very advanced by the time I got there." 

"What is your opinion on the timeliness of Dr. Wyatt's 911 page?" Dr. Zachary prodded.

Derek stood silent for a long, agonizing set of moments. "A half hour would have saved her." 

"But not seven minutes?" inquisitor asked.

Meredith swallowed against the fury that built in a writhing coil. "Who does that bastard think he is?" she hissed. Several heads in the row in front of her turned around, and she ducked further down into her seat, hoping she could melt into it.

"I'm not…" Derek stuttered. "I'm not sure." 

"What's our policy for dealing with doctors who are clearly not able to function under extreme stress?" inquisitor asked. Meredith finally saw, finally saw who was standing up, pounding Derek with endless, insensitive questions. Dr. Krycek. That backstabbing, unfeeling bastard. A member of Derek's own staff! 

"Okay, that's enough," Chief Webber interrupted. "We've determined that Dr. Wyatt should have had the CT scan assessed by member of the neurosurgery department instead of trying to do it himself, and he should have done it sooner. Let's look at the root of the problem, please."

Dr. Krycek didn't stop. "But after the root of the problem has already occurred, isn't it our responsibility to do everything in our power to make sure the situation doesn't degenerate more?" 

"Yes," Chief Webber answered. Derek stood behind him, looking like he wanted to bolt off the stage. He hadn't been dismissed yet, so he stood there, looking tortured. Even from a distance, he looked tortured. 

"So, I want to know, what policy do we have in place for dealing with doctors who are slipping?" Dr. Krycek asked.

Chief Webber shrugged. "We assign them a peer counselor and pull them from surgeries until they're ready for active duty again." 

"Do we have an anonymous, no-fear way to report suspicious behavior?" Dr. Krycek asked.

Chief Webber frowned. "What do you mean?" 

"Well," Dr. Krycek said. "Say I noticed Dr. Shepherd acting oddly days before that incident. Do we have a mechanism in place to allow us to file reports that I'm just not aware of?" 

Meredith clenched her fists. That surgery… the corpus callosotomy, the one the day before Derek had flipped out. Dr. Krycek had been watching Derek like a hawk. Derek had been slow during the surgery, slow and absent, pulling back every few moments to stretch and blink and pull himself together. And Dr. Krycek had been visually cataloguing the whole thing. That… bastard!

"No. That's something we might have to look into," Chief Webber answered. "If you were so concerned, why didn't you discuss it with either Dr. Shepherd or myself?" 

"It was a rhetorical question, sir," Dr. Krycek replied.

"Liar!" Meredith hissed. "Take some responsibility if you're going to harp on other people about it!" Cristina elbowed her and she shut up, blushing as people turned to look at her.

Dr. Krycek, far, far across the amphitheater, didn't hear her. "But, now, I'm curious," he continued. "How many people saw Dr. Shepherd slipping and didn't say a word?" 

A smattering of hands slowly raised after the first brave soul stuck his hand up, and Derek looked like he wanted to sink into the floor, sink in and fade away, but he was stuck up there, stuck in the spotlight. Meredith ached for him.

"I think this is proof positive that we need to work at implementing a better support structure. Just look at everything that's happened. Dr. Shepherd. Earlier this year, Dr. Burke. And what about that mess with Dr. Bailey before that? Who do we have for these people to talk to?" Dr. Krycek said. "Stress is an awful, strangling factor in the life of a high-powered surgeon. There's a lot of pressure to perform well, even under grueling, horrible circumstances. I, for one, would like to see this department receive the help it needs to remain a productive, life-saving machine."

The anger receded just a little, but Meredith, even after several deep breaths, still fumed, fumed at Dr. Krycek for what he'd done. She swallowed and looked down at her hands. Dr. Krycek had put Derek in an awful spotlight, for a noble cause, yes, but he could have been more tactful, and he certainly could have chosen to bring it up in a private meeting instead of roasting Derek alive on the stage. But, no, he'd gone for resounding shock value. For somebody who seemed to be advocating ways to reduce stress, he was certainly creating it well enough. Tears pricked her eyes. God, Derek was going to be a mess again after this. 

"You make a good point," Chief Webber said with a nod. "I'll definitely take this into consideration in the near future. Are there any other questions or concerns about the way this patient was handled?"

Silence hovered in the air. No perky residents popped up to ask anything, no attendings stood. Meredith breathed a quiet sigh of relief. Thank God.

"All right," Chief Webber said. "Let's move on to patient 52617."

Derek stepped down off the stage, but he didn't take his seat again. He walked up the side of the amphitheater, edging, slow, obviously trying not to draw attention to himself, and then when he reached the rear door, he disappeared in a blink. Meredith stood and ran after him without thinking, pushing and shoving past a long row of knees and feet and glowering people. Disgruntled residents and attendings all glared at her as she trampled them, but she had to go. Had to escape.

When she finally tore out of the amphitheater, Derek was gone. She glanced to the left and to the right. A nurse, who stood resting against the windowsill, shot a worried smile at her and pointed down the hall. "Thanks," Meredith said, and she took off at a sprint.

She rounded the corner and noticed the restrooms. She went into the men's room without even knocking. She didn't care.

The sound of someone being violently ill filtered through the air as she shoved the door open. "Derek?" she asked as she walked into the bathroom. Leaky sinks and urinals lined the walls. Only one stall door was closed, and nobody else was there.

The retching stopped, and a sniffle followed. "Mere?" Derek said, his voice a faint, tortured whisper.

"I'm here," she said. She leaned against the wall between his stall and the next. "Do you need help?" 

"No," he said. He coughed and started retching again.

"I'll be outside then," she whispered. As much as she wanted to stay and comfort him, she was pretty sure that what would be comforting to him was to not have her standing there while he was sick.

So, she left him alone while he finished. She sat down on the floor cross-legged across from the door to the bathroom, leaned her head back against the wall, and waited. She hoped this wasn't going to set him back after he'd been doing so much better. She hoped.

After several minutes, he came out, looking pale and shaky and in general not well. She didn't bother to ask if he was okay. He jammed his back against the wall next to her and slid down into a sitting position with a sigh.

"That was kind of rough," he said. He leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes.

"Kind of?" she blurted, incredulous at his blasé tone.

He rolled his head and opened his eyes, peering at her. She was surprised to find his gaze twinkling. The skin around his eyes crinkled, and he smiled at her. "I'm okay, Mere," he said. He gave her a wink that would have melted her if she weren't already so concerned.

Her eyes darted to the restroom door and then back to him. "You call losing your breakfast okay?" 

"Bad reaction to the spotlight, Mere. Coming down off the overdose of fight or flight adrenaline sucked." 

"But you're okay now."

He smiled at her. "Yes, Mere, really. I'm just moderately embarrassed."

She raised an eyebrow. "Moderately?" 

"Okay, extremely," he amended. He grinned. "You know, you're kind of repeating everything I'm saying."

"I'm just…" She paused as her brain jumped the tracks. "You're really okay?" 

"Well, I wouldn't mind moving to a small island and hiding for a year, but yes." He held up his hands for her to see. "See? No shakes now."

She reached up and pulled his hands into her own. He was right. There wasn't even a hint of trembling. They were warm and dry and still in her grasp. She massaged the knuckles while he watched, his gaze hooded with pleasure. He sighed, and she laughed as she stared at his hands, his perfect, non-shaking, two-million-dollar hands.

"What?" he asked. 

"You said you wanted to hide on a small island instead of somewhere in Alaska. My irresistible charms are already working." 

He chuckled. "You wish."

She released his palms and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, interlocking her fingers, hugging him so tightly her arms hurt. The relief speared her so violently she started to shake with the overwhelming release of tension. "I'm glad you're okay," she whispered into his neck. 

"What about you? Are you okay?" he asked with a frown. He ran his palms down her back in slow, comforting motions.

She sighed, biting away the sudden, thick influx of emotions as they lumped together in the back of her throat. "I was just worried. Now I'm not."

He tapped her nose with his index finger. "You're cute when you worry."

"I prefer the term ludicrously sexy." 

"Well, you're that, too."

She sighed and leaned into his chest. "We should probably get up before the conference gets out," she said. His scrubs were warm and dry and nice, and they smelled faintly of his aftershave. She could breathe him in forever, just sit there and breathe. 

"Mmm-hmm," he mumbled, his voice rumbling against her ear. "We probably should."

Neither of them moved. He blinked once, twice, but the third time, his eyelids stayed shut. A yawn cracked his lips apart. After several moments of stillness, his head started to dip forward. She let him doze there for a few minutes, resting with her head against him, listening to his soft, even breathing, until he snapped back, eyes still closed. "You're watching me," he muttered.

"It's a good view," she replied.

He smiled. She rubbed his arm. They rested there for a few minutes more, until both of their beepers went off, and they had to go back to work.


	26. Chapter 26

**Author's Notes: Well, one more chapter to go after this one! Wow, what a ride this has been. Thanks again for all the overwhelming, lovely feedback :)**

* * *

Meredith needed a break. She'd been on her feet for about ten hours by then, running this way, running that way, running this lab, running that lab, since early that morning. She found it hard to believe she would be out of her internship, a full-blown neurosurgery resident in just one and a half short weeks. Her surgeries with Dr. Weller had cinched the deal for her, made up her mind. Neurology cases just made her feel more at home than anything else. Still, despite finally arriving at the end of the year, finally with a firm roadmap in hand, it didn't feel much different. It seemed like the work she was doing was the same as the work she'd always been doing since she'd started at Seattle Grace, mainly the work nobody else wanted to do. However, it was possible that Bailey was just enjoying abusing her in a last ditch, home run sprint. Because, well, that was just something Bailey would do.

Regardless, she was tired. Really tired. She'd gone to all ends of creation and back on Saturday looking at apartments with Derek, and then again on Monday and Tuesday afternoon after her shifts. Sunday had been another extended shift, and she hadn't gotten home until around one in the morning. There'd been pretty much no sleep involved in the whole four-day stretch, though with Derek playing intern and matching all her shifts, it had been thankfully tolerable. But now it was Wednesday. Her painfully brief lunch break had been hosed from running errands. It was getting toward late afternoon. Sitting down sounded like paradise.

She groaned as she pushed into the dark gallery and collapsed with a sigh. Just the mere act of sitting was heaven, and the cool, dark quiet relaxed her. Things stopped hurting, stopped aching. She smiled a lazy, relieved smile as the pulsing throbs of agony in her joints melted to a dull hum. 

Mark sat in the back row, engrossed in a fat, yellow book, a book whose content had him staring, perplexed, with the most serious frown on his face she had ever seen. She was about to shrug and let it go, assuming it was some medical reference, but then he shifted, and the cover of the book became visible for a few seconds. She squinted at it suspiciously. It had the same bends, the same folds, the same worn look as…

"Hey," she said. "Where'd you get that?"

Mark looked up. "What?"

"The book," she said. "Where'd you get that?"

He smirked. "Derek. He dropped it in my hands this morning and said I couldn't go until he was sure I wasn't going to decapitate myself with my own fishing pole."

"I'm… You…" Meredith stuttered. "What?"

Her thoughts came to a roaring halt. Derek hadn't mentioned Mark at all since she'd kicked him out of the house two and a half weeks ago, much to Izzie's chagrin. Derek hadn't mentioned Mark at all, and now they were going fishing? When had this happened? What had spurred that on? She suddenly felt drastically out of the loop, and curious about why Derek hadn't even hinted at it. 

Mark shrugged. "I grew up in Manhattan. We don't do fishing. We do shopping, Broadway, and clubs. Things that involve buildings. Not trees," he explained wryly, misinterpreting her speechlessness.

"You know," Meredith said, her dumbfounded, tired brain wandering away with Mark's subject change. "I did kind of wonder why Derek even had that…"

Mark raised an eyebrow, closed the book, set it aside on the chair next to him, and leaned forward. "You think he's always fished?" he asked. "It's not like he had a dad to drag him out to do it. Why do you think I got so goddamned confused when I came out here? There must be something to it, though. This…" He scrunched up his face in an unadulterated look of displeasure. "Nature stuff. If it's kept him out here this long."

"He must have picked it up when we were out packing up some of his things at the trailer this weekend…" she mused.

"I don't know where he got it." Mark said. He frowned. "Why are you so amazed?"

"It's just… I didn't realize…" Meredith shook her head. "Never mind."

She tried to recite the moments in her head, all the moments since she'd kicked him out that she'd seen Mark, and she drew blanks. Nothing but blanks. What on earth had brought all this on? There must have been something monumental… some moment that she'd missed, and she felt bereft.

"You were right, you know," Mark said. "He's changed. A lot."

"When did you two talk?" she blurted, unable to keep it together anymore. "I mean… last time I saw you two together, well it was…"

He frowned. "I sat with him while he watched your craniotomy. He needed… company."

She bit her lip and nodded. She hadn't been paying much attention to Derek then. She'd seen him, yes, the one time she'd looked up. She'd felt his eyes on her for a while after that. But she'd been so soaked up in the adrenaline, so excited, so engrossed, she just hadn't even thought of him again until she'd closed, and by the time she had actually been able spare a glance, he had been long gone.

He still hadn't spoken much of his peer counseling experience that first day, though from his heartfelt apology and exhaustion that night, she'd pieced together that the day had been pretty harrowing for him. She could believe that under the crush of all that trauma, he'd finally bent and given Mark an inch. She could definitely believe that.

She peered at Mark, peered at him and wondered as he sat there, looking lost and uncomfortable. "He didn't like it out here to start with either," she said, inexplicably feeling the need to comfort him. 

"What's to like?" he snapped. "It's so dreary, and… plant-filled."

Meredith leaned back and smiled. "Ferryboats."

He stared her, his face absent of any expression whatsoever. "Huh?" 

"He has a thing for them."

Mark smirked. "I think he has a thing for you."

He winked at her. Now that he had put the Fishing for Dummies book away, his focus stayed on her for a moment and then drifted to the side. He stared behind her, down at the OR, a genuine smile on his face, not a smirk, and then he shifted his stare back to Meredith in a motion that dared, just dared her to look behind her.

"What's the big deal?" she asked as she turned in her chair, only to have her world stop when her field of view settled on the OR below.

"Is that?" she blurted, even though she would know him anywhere.

"I was wondering when you'd notice," Mark said with a chuckle. "He's been there for over an hour now."

She swallowed. Derek stood below with his back to her, working nimbly on a man whose spine was exposed to the operating room like a bloody offering. Chief Webber hovered next to Derek, shoulder-to-shoulder, supervising, helping, watching, but at the moment, it was obvious that he was fulfilling a subservient role in the whole affair while Derek worked as the master.

A seeping warmth like an advancing narcotic spread a smile across her face before she could stop it. She watched him, found herself standing up, slowly. She walked up to the glass, placed her palms on the window and just… watched. Watched his head make minute movements as he shifted his view, watched his favorite scrub cap, the one with the ferryboats on it, bob and move, or hover as he entered a moment of intense focus. His back twitched from side to side as he moved his fingers and hands, though his torso blocked her view of exactly what he was doing. He was a pillar of intensity, not once stepping back to blink or work out cricks, something she hadn't seen him able to do since before the ferry accident over a month ago. The Chief looked over and said something, his surgical mask rippling as his mouth moved. Derek nodded. And then it was back to work, work, work.

It was the happiest sight she'd seen in months. Happy because it meant so, so much more than just a spinal surgery. So, so much more... She stared, her lips slightly parted. She ran her fingers down the glass, not caring about the streaks she was leaving behind. She just couldn't stop staring.

"From what I can gather," Mark said, surprising her enough that she would have jerked had her muscles not been drugged into catatonic euphoria. She'd almost forgotten he was even there. "He's fishing a bullet out. Some poor good Samaritan tried to stop a robbery and will probably be paralyzed for his trouble."

Meredith swallowed. It was a sad, sad thing, yes. But she just couldn't bring herself to feel bad, couldn't bring herself to feel anything but overwhelming bliss, shout it to the rooftops, the floor is falling out from under me and I don't care, unadulterated bliss.

"Derek. He's—" she whispered. The words choked up in her throat as she broke her stare reluctantly to look at Mark.

Mark smiled at her. "Yep!" he said.

"Why didn't you tell me when I came tromping in here?"

He shrugged. "The look on your face when you found out on your own was worth it."

She finally peeled herself from the glass and sank into a chair, the first chair that would intercept her fall to the floor, because her legs just weren't working anymore. Nothing was working. There was a disconnect between her brain and the rest of her body. Her brain was happily in la-la land, languishing in the rapture. Her limbs were begging for directions, but they just weren't getting any. The conductor was on break.

"Derek. He's—" she said again, dumbfounded, watching, watching, watching.

And then she started to cry. It bubbled out of her like an exploding can of shook up soda, ratcheted up her spine. The giddy relief, the joy, all of it… It spilled out onto her cheeks even as she sat there in heaven, just watching him. She hugged herself, clenching her arms with her hands until the nails dug in and started to hurt.

Derek paused, every muscle in his body held tight in a rigid lock. Slowly, he turned and looked up. It was as if he'd sensed her there, breaking down for him. Their eyes met. His surgical mask obscured his mouth, but the smile on his face was obvious anyway, just from the way his eyes twinkled. He winked at her and turned back to his patient. She cried harder.

"You okay?" Mark asked.

She nodded, wiping her eyes frantically with the backs of her palms. "You have no idea how okay I am. I just… I'm…" The words abandoned her, and Mark just let her sit there quietly, not prying.

Cristina barged in, the door cracking open and then slamming shut in her wake. "Meredith, I—" she began, determined. And then she stopped short as she appeared to register the sight before her. "Hey. Are you o—" Her voice cut off, and her gaze followed Meredith's into the OR. "Is that Dr. Shepherd?"

Meredith glanced at Cristina as she sat down. "Yeah," Meredith said, her voice shattered, a pile of dusty pieces at the lowest octave she could manage. She shook as tears continued to sluice down her face. "It's Derek."

"He's operating," Cristina said. Then she frowned. "Sorry. I seem to be stupid right now."

"Yeah, me too," Meredith sobbed.

She, Mark, and Cristina sat there in silence for several minutes, until Meredith started to get a grip on herself again. The tears stopped, and she sat there, smiling, blinking, watching like some sort of drug addict on a high. But this was so much better than morphine. She sighed.

"Meredith," Cristina said, her voice hesitant, but desperate.

"Yeah?" 

"I don't mean to interrupt your McMoment, but I have to tell you—" Cristina paused abruptly. She darted a look to Meredith, then to Derek down in the OR. She shifted in her seat like she was having a little private war with herself. "Well."

Meredith prodded, "Yeah?" 

"May 3rd," Cristina blurted.

Meredith blinked and peeled her eyes away from the scene in the operating room below, only to stare at Cristina instead. Cristina's eyes watered, and tears of her own slipped hesitantly down her cheeks in an uncharacteristic display of emotion.

"Seriously?" Meredith asked.

Cristina nodded.

"You know I'll be there," Meredith said, and the happy, drugged feeling she'd been experiencing, the one she'd doubted she would ever top, was suddenly bursting through the atmosphere to new, spatial heights.

"Am I missing something?" Mark asked.

"Yes," Meredith replied.

"Okay, just making sure," he said.

Cristina snorted, and the three of them continued their vigil.

Izzie busted into the gallery next. "Meredith. Alex just told me you're going to rent out your master bedroom to him starting next month. You can't be serious about—" her voice ended abruptly in a squeak and then silence. She stopped and plopped down into the chair on Meredith's other side. "Wow," she said.

The vigil resumed with four this time and continued until Derek closed, yanked his mask down, and started pulling off his protective gear. Meredith launched out of her chair and raced down to the scrub room to meet him. She slammed into him just as he exited the OR. He grunted at the impact. She wrapped her arms around him and stayed there, plastered to him.

"Hey," he said with a drawling chuckle as he walked them into the scrub room with little shuffle steps to clear the doorway and let Chief Webber out of the OR.

"Grey," the Chief said as he brushed past them, not seeming to mind the horrific PDA she was instigating, which was good, because she just couldn't bring herself to let go. They both stood there while Chief Webber rinsed off and scrubbed out. Derek stood awkwardly in her grasp, his arms held away from her.

"Excellent work, Shepherd. That man might be walking again soon. You saved the nerves," the Chief said as he soaped up his hands. "You're officially off probation."

He left them there without further comment. Derek let her hang on him, just relishing his warmth, until finally after a few moments, he laughed. "I have to scrub out, Mere. You're killing me. I can't touch."

"I know," she said. "I'm sorry." Reluctantly, she pulled back and let him wash off his hands and arms. "How was it?" she asked.

"Like good sex," he replied, not looking up as he worked at his fingernails.

"Oh?" she said.

"I'm exhausted," he admitted with a sigh. "But, damn, was it worth it."

She laughed as he dried off and came over to wrap his arms around her, finally able to give her a real hug. He ran his hands down her back and lower. She leaned into him, and they ground together. He groaned. "You're better, though," he said, his voice a breathy whisper.

They stood there in the dark of the scrub room, breathing, skin on skin. She sighed into his shoulder. She looked up at him, and he looked back down at her, his gaze hooded in lust and weariness. The emotions twisted and tangoed into a dark, writhing pair behind his eyes. Lips parting enough to loose the smallest of sighs, he leaned down into her until his mouth brushed against hers, soft, fleeting. The kiss slid into existence from that small touch. She clutched at his shoulders, nails biting into him, trying to hold on as he dipped her back and drank her down.

The door slammed, and they broke apart, panting. "Sorry," a nurse said, but it was too late.

Meredith started to laugh, and Derek laughed right along with her. "We really shouldn't do that here," Meredith said.

"We really shouldn't," Derek agreed as he fought to catch his breath. His pupils were dilated, and his skin had a flushed, feverish tone to it. His hair was slightly mussed, just enough to tell the world he'd been doing something not quite professional. She imagined she looked much the same way.

"So," Meredith said, a playful smile curling across her lips. "I hear from a semi-reliable source that you're taking Mark fishing with you."

He snorted. "If Mark can even cast a line, I'll be amazed."

"But you are going with him."

"Yeah," he said. "I still don't know if it's a good idea, but…"

"You never know," she said. She wrapped her arms around him again and stood there, leaning up against him. It was a nice place to be. "And he does care, Derek. He cares about you."

"I know. It doesn't make what he did okay."

"No, but…"

He shrugged. "Seattle was supposed to be my fresh start. Maybe it's one of those for him, too. Maybe."

"Maybe," she agreed.

He sighed. "Am I being a fool?" he asked. He peered at her with a questioning gaze, one that begged her for guidance, for something to hold on to. 

"No," she said. She squeezed him. "You're being the man I fell in love with."

The flush on his face, which had slowly been receding, bled back into existence. His lips parted, and he breathed in quickened, shortened pants. "You're really making me want you right now," he said, his voice tortured.

"Am I?" she purred. She pushed into him, felt his arousal pushing into her. He backed up against the wall and stood there, letting her torment him. She ran her hands along his back and watched him with a lascivious grin as he fought to not give in to temptation and ravish her right there. In the back of her mind, the little voice was telling her to stop, that this was a bad thing to do in the hospital. The little voice had won earlier. At the moment, the little voice was pouting while she squashed it.

Derek cleared his throat. He thunked his head back against the wall and let out a pitiful moan. "So, um. Did you sign the lease application?" he asked, struggling with the words. He clutched at her shoulders like he was trying not to drown as she slid her hands down to his hips and under the waistband of his scrubs. In the darkness, him pushed into the corner like that, it would look like they were just kissing, just hugging, and he was at her mercy.

"Yes," she said. "I turned it in over lunch. Which means that now, at this moment, I just realized that I'm starving. You owe me dinner."

"Dinner?" he asked, dazed, as she worked him further into confusion and lust. She paused, giving him a breather. He blinked. His whole body shook. "I need to…" his breath hitched. "Change first."

"Me too," she said. She leaned in and kissed him, plunging into him, his parted lips. He moaned again, and the sound swept down her throat, curled down her spine. She licked, sucked, and teased, and when she finally pulled back, he stood there swaying, his eyes glassy with arousal.

"You're killing me," he said.

She finally withdrew, and Derek stood there looking blank. He panted and swallowed and panted and swallowed, trying to get some semblance of coherence back.

"Maybe we should skip dinner," she whispered.

"Maybe we should," he said, followed by another groan.

She winked. "Race you to the car?"

He stumbled forward from the wall. "You'll win. I can barely walk," he hissed.

"Okay, okay," she said. "No racing then."

He growled as he hitched stiffly toward the door. "You're going to pay for this tonight," he said, a dirty grin sprawling across his face despite his obvious discomfort. "And pay, and pay, and pay." 

"Bring it," she replied, returning his grin with one of her own.

"Well, I'll certainly bring you," he said.

From the tormented, desirous look on his face, she had absolutely no doubt that he would.


	27. Chapter 27

**Author's Notes: Well, this is it! The last part! Thank you all for taking this journey with me. I hope you enjoyed it :) I plan on taking a small break to cool the creative jets, but I already have at least one more story idea in the works :)**

* * *

"I can't believe I won't live here anymore in just two more weeks," Meredith said as Derek pushed open the door. The keys jingled in his hand as he shifted them back into his coat pocket. 

Getting home hadn't been as much of an ordeal as he'd thought it would be. He'd visited the showers before changing back into his street clothes. Taking a cold dunk under the high-pressure showerhead had helped immensely, and, after letting the icy, gelid water pelt him for several minutes, he'd felt anything but lustful. He'd climbed out, shivery and twitching, teeth chattering as he'd toweled off. Maybe it had been overkill. But at least he'd gotten some coherency back. Enough to remember how to drive, walk, and speak properly. Three important elements necessary for the trip home. Meredith, merciful for once, hadn't even teased him in the car. 

He still ached from the long surgery, from the residual sexual tension, from the chill that now slipped deep into the marrow of his bones, and just behind all that was a thin layer of exhaustion, not pounding, not crushing, but it was certainly there, certainly looming. Despite all that, he felt damned good, he decided as he walked into the cozy, dimly lit house after Meredith.

"You're not having second thoughts?" he asked, a spear of doubt slamming into him that he'd somehow managed to pressure her into something she wasn't ready for yet. He quickly swept it away. She'd seemed happy about getting a place with him. 

Apartment hunting had, dare he say it, actually been fun. They'd wandered from room to room of every place, discussing what they saw themselves doing there, or how they pictured the furniture would look. She'd been so adorable, posing for him in various locations to give him a mockup of what it might look like to come home and find her there. 

They'd finally settled on a really nice two-bedroom apartment about a mile from the hospital. It had a balcony that you could sit and watch the Sound from, hardwood floors, a spacious kitchen, not that either of them really cooked, a full-sized bathtub, and all sorts of other features that had made them fall in love with it in about the space of four seconds. Meredith had glowed at him as she stood in front of the sliding glass doors that opened out onto the balcony and said, "I think I want this one." He'd grinned, and within forty minutes, they had been taking home the lease application to mull over. The mulling had barely lasted the drive home. Now, their move in date was set, and everything was... Well, it was perfect. 

He helped her with her coat.

She frowned as she spun around, letting him pull her coat sleeves off without too much trouble. She looked at him with curious suspicion. "No, of course I'm not having second thoughts. Why, are you?"

"Not a single one," he replied. He took her coat and his own and hung them up in the hall closet.

She followed him closely, close enough that when he closed the closet door and turned to face her, she was right there, wrapping her arms around him. He sighed at the warmth.   
"It's just..." she muttered into his chest. "I have lots of memories in this house. It's weird, knowing we're moving into a blank slate."

"Would it help if you... said goodbye?" he asked. 

"Derek, it's a house."

He shrugged. "So? I've said goodbye to stranger things. Come here." He grasped her hand with a smile. 

"What are you doing, Derek?" she asked, a curious grin spreading across her lips.

"Helping you say goodbye, making you pay... Take your pick," he said, giving her what he hoped looked like a nonchalant shrug, though just the mere thought of her paying, and paying, and paying made him start to race with sudden, twitching energy. And he would make her pay. He had long, definitive plans about the payment, and Meredith had just given him a nice theme to work with. He could do themes. 

She followed him as he turned and walked into the dark living room, a questioning gaze sprawled across her face, until he walked up to the mantle and posed, working from his memories of that first morning. "Dusty, but nice," he commented.

"This was technically where we met," she whispered, following his train of thought.

"I know," he replied. "Toilet brush on your mantle notwithstanding, I thought you made a great impression..."

Her mouth fell open. "What? I did not have a toilet brush on my mantle!"

He laughed. "You did. And a painting. And some other random stuff. Suffice it to say, you had me intrigued. Just what did you do with all of that, anyway? Did I miss the Grey family yard sale?"

"I refuse to believe I had a toilet brush on my mantle," she said with a sniff. She crossed her arms over her chest and stared petulantly at him.

He smirked at her and strode over to the couch. He sat down and with a relaxed, sprawling motion, he stretched his arms over the back along the upholstery, sighing, watching her as she stared at the mantle with a squinting, perplexed look that said, despite her refusal, she was trying to remember. Her eyes slipped shut, and she sighed as she relived some memory, some distant thought. 

"Oh, God," she said after a handful of moments, her distant gaze morphing into one of unadulterated horror as she turned back to face him. "I did have a toilet brush on my mantle. Why didn't you run screaming?"

"I didn't notice it until the morning after. And, like I said, you were intriguing. You remember that first night? When we came here?"

She smiled. "Derek, I hate to bust up your manly ego, but I was kind of drunk," she said as she plopped down onto the couch next to him. "I remember you were cute, and I really wanted some sex like the then-slut I was. That's honestly about it."

"Wow," Derek said with a grin. "Well, at least we finally know who took advantage. I remember all of it. And you're not a slut."

"Hey, you get points for being emotionally distraught! And I said I was a then-slut. I'm not a now-slut. You've ruined me as far as now-sluttery," Meredith said.

He raised an eyebrow. "Now-sluttery?"

"I was improvising," she said with a shrug.

"Remind me not to challenge you at scrabble."

She leaned into him and licked her lips. "Strip scrabble might be fun..."

"As long as you don't count your earrings," he countered. "I'd be tempted to limit words to a medical dictionary, too. We'd be on even footing. None of this now-sluttery stuff."

She laughed, her soft breath ruffling against his skin as she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and kissed him along the jaw line. "I don't think there was this much banter the first time around," she said into his neck. "I would remember banter like this."

"You told me this couldn't be anything. That this was one night," he said. "And I, being emotionally distraught, apparently, said okay." He pulled her up against him, until her thigh mashed into him, and her torso pressed against his own. She watched him, silent, her gray eyes clouding under a haze of distant thoughts. She blinked, long and slow, and she inhaled a sharp breath.

"I remember, now," she said. Her eyelids slipped open, and she stared at him in the darkness. Her pupils glittered. "Then what?"

For a moment, he simply stared at her. He inhaled her scent. Lavender, cinnamon, warmth. It climbed into the back of his throat and left him panting for her. He wrapped his arms around her neck, plunging at her with a sudden intensity. The buildup of lust that he'd thought the shower had washed away came roaring back, burbling up from a deep, deep well in his brain. He kissed her, pressed his lips against hers and clasped his hands around her arms. She arched against him, responding instantly. 

The sound of their breathing formed a slow but relentless rhythm. She dipped back, and he ran his hands up underneath her shirt, sliding his palms along the silky warmth of her skin. He slipped his fingers beneath the underwires of her bra and pushed up, until the entire garment popped up over her curves and settled higher on her chest. He cupped her, began to work her into an aroused mess as he undulated, grinding his groin up against her, until the ache became a steady pounding, and he felt like his pants were going to strangle him to death. 

She panted against him, loosing little, warbling moans every time he shifted the weight of his tortured lower body against her. She wrapped her legs back behind him, holding him there as she stared into his eyes. "Is this how we did it before?" she gasped.

"Yes," he said. He kissed her again, down in the warm crook of her neck, just over the bump of her clavicle. She hitched in his grasp and inhaled sharply. He pulled up on her shirt, and she curled into him, lifting her back up off the couch, letting him yank it over her head in one swift motion. When he tossed it away, it caught the air and fluttered to the floor. He unclasped her bra next and tore it from her.

His own shirt was the next thing to go. She brushed against him with her tiny, ineffectual fists, only to splay her palms against his stomach, hesitating for a moment. After a long pause, he leaned into her, took a tent of skin from her shoulder between his teeth, sucked, licked. She started grappling with the buttons of his shirt while he lost himself in the taste of her. A hollow popping noise announced each one of her successes. As the last one freed his neck from the grip of his collar, she swept her hands over his shoulders, taking his shirt with it. He flexed and moved, working off the sleeves as she pulled on them. They caught on his wrists, snagged up against his watch. He growled and ripped and tore at them until the offending clothing was gone.

She lay back against the pillow of the couch and bit her lip, staring up at him, half-naked, trusting. "You're beautiful," he said, leaning down on top of her, plundering her mouth again. She tasted of mint and slick heat. The scent of lavender pulsed back through his flaring nostrils. He brushed his nose against her neck, along the underside of her chin, the fine hairs that ran along her skin tickling against him as he breathed her in. Her flowery scent swirled around him, drowning him in a muzzy haze of warmth. 

"You're beautiful," he said again, pulling back. He swept her mussed hair away from her face. Sweat dotted her cheeks. She stared at him with a relaxed, sensual smile.

Desire laid waste to his senses when she started to fumble with the buttons of his jeans. She popped the first one open and slipped her fingers underneath, not even attempting the next one yet. Her nails brushed the front of his boxers in a fleeting, teasing motion. "You're beautiful," he whispered, groaned, moaned, "and you're killing me."

"I thought I was the one who was supposed to be paying?" she chuckled as she started with the second button, slowly, painfully, until he was making embarrassing mewling noises at her, but he couldn't stop himself. He felt her working at it, felt her fingers slipping behind the button, only the thin layer of his boxers between him and rapture. He reached to help her, reached because it hurt, hurt to not be released from the confines, released and free to bury himself inside her, and he nearly couldn't stand it anymore, but she grabbed his wrists and pushed him back with a sultry laugh. She began to undo the third button in the slowest, most torturous, most exquisite bit of foreplay he'd ever had to endure. "We'll pay together," she whispered, letting loose her own frustrated sigh when he slammed into her again.

By button number five, he was nearly nonsensical. "Meredith," he moaned when she peeled his jeans down his hips and pushed his boxers down, down, down. He kicked them violently to the floor when they pooled around his ankles. And then the torture began all over again when he realized they hadn't yet attacked the problem of Meredith's pants. He ground into her, frustrated by momentary oversight, pained by the sharp feeling of her khakis against his bare skin. He clawed blindly at her zipper and found himself yanking her slacks down her legs within moments. He ran his thumb up under the small front piece of her panties, put pressure down into the damp warmth. She rolled into the touch with a moaning sigh, lifting up off the couch. Grabbing the small line of lace that ran up over her hip and back behind her, he yanked them down, and she resettled, all in one quick motion.

Her tiny hands brushed against the juncture of his legs and his abdomen on each side, and the warmth of her palms soaked his skin. He sighed as he pushed up against her, sandwiching her hands between their bodies. Her soft skin greeted him this time as he came down on her. Closing his eyes at the sensation of dripping warmth between her legs, he rocked back and forth, back and forth, relishing the feel of her. She parted for him, and then he slipped inside her. 

Instant relief. 

One moment there had been agony, agony at not yet being home, and the next moment, the pain gave way to pleasure, like morphine sliding into the veins of someone mortally wounded. She clenched around him, and he held there, poised over her on the edge of... something, savoring the feeling of her wrapped around him, the feeling of her heat seeping into him. He let loose a choking moan. His vision flared, and for a brief moment, he found himself completely overwhelmed.

Home. Home, he was home.

"I remember this, too," she said, breathing, smiling. 

"Well, I would hope so," he replied, breathless, barely able to grab onto even that simple thought. Home. The word rang inside his head like the peal of bells. Home, home, home. He twisted a little, moving inside her, sending her into her own, shivery, nonsensical pile of limbs and lust. 

He leaned in and kissed her, then shifted until he was crouching on his knees, and she rested interlocked with him, legs wrapped around his waist, still on her back. She sat up with a minor struggle, and he rose into the motion, bucking a little. She laughed as they came back down onto the couch, bouncing as the cushions resettled. She leaned into him, a look of pleasure twisting across her face as she rocked against him. Her thin fingers ran along the skin of his neck, fleeting. They sat that way, hugging, kissing, petting, and he rocked them with little thrusts, just enough to keep them both hanging on the edge of mindless desire, until he couldn't stand it anymore, couldn't stand not moving in full pistoning motions, couldn't stand the feel of her legs squeezing around his waist as she moaned little, frantic moans, couldn't stand the fact that her wet, slick heat wasn't sliding up and down along him more than the barest inch, couldn't stand the inner drive that was telling him to stop trying to prolong things, that was begging him to kick up into a higher gear. He pushed her back onto the couch, flattened her out again, stretched her arms out behind her over the arm of the couch, and began to pound into her, his shallow gasps racking him with quiet, struggling twitches.

"Derek," she pleaded. Her fingers curled against his chest.

She was hot and tight. Hot, tight, all around him, and utterly his. For a torrent of moments, he was a slave to it, to the blinding need to have her, to right then claim her as his and his alone. But then, as the initial panic to move and push subsided, he slowed his frenzy to a crawl, languishing in the feeling of her slip, slip, sliding up and down the length of him. He breathed against her skin, licking up the salty taste of her. 

"What do you need?" he asked as he ran his hand, squeezing, up the supple underside of her thigh. She twitched into him, her knee rising up to his armpit, thigh brushing up along his ribcage.

Her hands splayed through his hair, thin fingers running through the sweaty tangles like the searching curl of a breeze. "You," she whispered. 

He shook with the need to have her right then. "I want you," he said, pushing up against her and receding like the swell and fall of a wave. He slipped down, almost escaping her, only to thrust up to the hilt again in slow, deliberate motions, the rise and withdrawal of a tide to her crescent moon.

"You have me," she replied, eyes glassy. 

Her eyes rolled back slightly, she rose up against him in a spasm, every muscle clenched, and her lips peeled back from her teeth in a grimace that looked almost painful. "Derek," she said. It was a quiet, tiny, pleading whisper, caught in the grip of a whining, pleasured moan. Her nails bit into his back as she raked her arms down his skin.

Her frenzied clenching drove him into his own release, and he let go of himself just as she found herself again. He groaned as the rolling, slow burn swept through his lower torso and he twitched. "Mere," he gasped, briefly losing his balance over her, collapsing on her. He lost track of everything. For just a moment, it was all gone except the supernova behind his eyelids. His lips parted as he struggled for air. And then it faded, leaving him sated. Distant in the background, just behind the thrum of his pleasure, exhaustion crept in and stretched out with him like a lover.

He and Meredith lay there breathing for a moment, subdued and quiet in the darkness. Meredith wrapped her arms over his back, ran her hands up and down along his damp skin. Her breaths hit the side of his neck, and she stopped her roving search of his spine to run her fingers through his hair. He propped himself up again after he recovered and stared at her, his face hovering less than a centimeter over her own. He slipped his palm back against her forehead, running it backward into the long tangles of her hair. He kissed her, slow, breathing her in before pulling back to grin stupidly at her. 

"I remember," Meredith whispered in his ear. "We did this again."

"And again, and again, and again. How else do you think I ended up on the floor?" he said with a dry laugh before leaning down to kiss her again. Despite the creep of tiredness, he felt the arousal building again as he lay against her, skin on skin, heat to heat.

She sighed. "We never did it in here again. Why not?"

He shrugged. "We could make up for it now. I actually checked before we left... Izzie has a long shift. She won't be back until after two, assuming she comes back at all tonight."

Meredith frowned. "No. I want to say goodbye to other rooms. Other... furniture."

He chuckled. "Well, where to next?"

"Where else have we done this?"

"Where else haven't we?" he asked, grinning at her. He started to rub and slide against her, groaning at the friction of her thighs against him.

"Good point," she said. "Do you think we can get to them all tonight?"

"I'm perfectly willing to try," he said. He bent down and kissed her again.

She smiled at him, but it bled away after a few seconds. "Derek..."

"Yeah?" he asked. Her face had grown so suddenly serious that he forced himself to still, despite the twitching, pulsing desire in his limbs to start moving again.

She ran her hands down over his lower back and gripped his ass, half-dragging, half-guiding him down into the juncture of her thighs, until he was solidly resting in the tip of the vee. She gripped him between her thighs, flexing around him. He moaned and started to shake when she wouldn't let him move again. She held him firmly against her, and he started to pant with the need to dip into her again and start thrusting. 

"I'm looking forward to making new memories with you," she whispered, stroking his back as he quivered.

He kissed her, peeling her hair back from her face and neck as he ran his hands through it. It was so soft. "Me, too," he said.

"I mean I'm really looking forward to it. I mean..."

"I know what you mean, Meredith," he replied, shuddering as she shifted, just enough to torture him out of his precarious equilibrium. His mouth fell open and he breathed like he was gagging. "Mere, I have to..." he whispered, frantic, until his voice left him entirely. He said please, he did, but it came out as a tormented moan. 

She took mercy on him, releasing him to pound into her again. Without any further encouragement, he slipped up inside her to the hilt, shaking as the desire tore his mind to shreds. "You have no idea what you do to me," he said, half growling as he drove into her again and again and again.

She laughed, but it fell into a deep, whining, long moan after three stuttering syllables. "I think I do," she said between frantic pants. After that, the conversation degenerated. He slammed into her, again, again, again, until she was screaming, pelting his name at him, "Derek, Derek, Derek," right along in time with him. He kissed her, swallowing the words. They rattled down his throat like the pulse of a heartbeat. Derek. Derek. Derek. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Her hands clawed his back.

The wave struck him not too long after. He groaned and released, shaking as his vision melted into a tunnel, and all he saw was her, her sparkling, glittering eyes in the darkness, her pale, delicate, slightly freckled skin. She was still caught in a moaning frenzy at the pinnacle, so he reached down into the slick heat between them and helped her along with his fingers, until she was shaking and screaming and collapsing, too. They lay against the couch, breathing. The dull exhaustion returned, sinking into him further, below the skin this time instead of clinging to his pores. It took him longer this time to recover. It took her longer, too.

"We didn't make it to the next spot," she whispered finally, her fingers twisting in his hair.

He didn't bring his head up from her neck. "Um, nope," he replied. "Stop teasing me and we might this time around, though."

"I wasn't teasing!"

"You practically held me prisoner!"

"I still wasn't teasing," she replied with a grin.

He heaved a sigh into her neck, still unable to pull himself off her. He just needed a few more minutes. Just a few. "I just hope I can make it through the rest of this. If we do a two-stop tour at every place we've had sex at in this house, I think I might be dead by morning, my awesome virility notwithstanding."

"But what a way to go," she said with a laugh.

"So true," he muttered. 

They lay in silence, breathing as she rubbed his skin in slow, soothing motions. He felt his eyelids droop. The warmth of her body was like his own private burner, staving off the chill of the evaporating sweat. He sighed and just let himself soak her in.

"Derek?" Meredith whispered after a long time. She barely broke through the exhausted haze.

"Mmm?" he mumbled.

"I know you've been better lately... but... I just want to make sure you know how much I--"

Her words brought him out of his stupor. He squeezed her arm and kissed her, cutting her off. "I know, Meredith," he whispered, pulling back to stare at her as she recovered with a series of gasping swallows. "I was stupid not to have known it sooner."

"It wasn't stupid, Derek," she said. "I really... Just... You're okay? Really?"

"Mere, really," he replied, pumping as much force into his voice as he could manage despite the warm fuzz of tiredness, despite the fact that he was starting to ache with desire again, just from resting so close to her. "I'm fine. Yes, it still scares the hell out of me, what happened, but it's not the same anymore. It's not... ruling my life. And that's what's important."

She smiled. "So, the now is okay?"

"I don't know, I think the now is in fantastic shape, don't you? The future's looking pretty spiffy, too."

She grinned. "You're such a cheese."

"You like it, though."

"I do."

"Shall we say goodbye to the bathtub now?" he asked. A bath would be really, really nice right about then... He groaned as he forced himself to his feet. Aches and twinges piled into his brain as his nerves registered that no, he was not lying down comfortably on top of Meredith anymore, yes, he was telling his limbs to move, and no, things were not allowed to just collapse on him. The air was chilly, and he finally started to feel it. A shiver racked his frame. 

Meredith did much of the same wincing and awkward stretching as she stood. She smiled as she leaned into him, warming him again with her skin. She wrapped her arms around his waist and cupped his ass with her hands. "I was thinking the shower first," she said. "Get the standing stuff done while we still can."

"Oh?" he replied with a smirk. The shower could work. He pictured her, slick with warm water, wet, the spray curling down over her shoulders in a roar, moaning as he took her again and again.

"You can do your bendy thing," she said, snapping him from his daydream.

He blinked. "My bendy thing."

"You know," she prodded, making a weird sort of gyrating motion with her hips. "The thing. With the bending."

"Oh, that thing," Derek replied as he finally remembered. "You really like that, don't you?"

"God, yes," she hissed, her eyes dripping shut as a lascivious smile curled across her face. He liked that just the memory of it made her quiver. He liked it a lot.

They started walking toward the stairs, still interlocked in an embrace. He kissed her as he backed her toward the staircase. He turned her around when they met the first step so that she could see where she was going.

"Wanna know a secret?" he asked as she took the first step, wobbly, rigidly, exactly like he felt. His lower back twinged. His calves and quads complained bitterly. His arms were starting to feel like a gelatin mixture. Steps? Steps sucked, all of his muscle groups thought at once. Steps sucked, and they still had quite a few more rounds to go. The shower, the tub, the bed, the foyer, the washing machine, and the kitchen table at the very least. His whole body moaned at the thought of all the energy that would take. But then he watched as she took the next step, watched her naked body flexing and moving just inches in front of him, and it didn't seem so bad anymore. He felt his groin begin to twitch again, and he sighed against the sudden race of heat as it crawled down his spine.

"What's the secret?" she asked as she took another step.

He blinked, catching his train of thought before it wandered off again into lusty daydreams. He thumped up to the step just behind her and shot is arms out. She gasped in surprise at the sudden movement, but she didn't have much more than a moment to react. He caught her around the waist and ground into her back, pushing himself between her thighs. He felt himself start to stiffen up almost instantly. He bent over her, shaking as he gripped her waist and pulled her against him in a ratcheting, harsh, inching movement that made her moan and twist against him. 

"You don't have to be in the shower to do the bendy thing," he said, his voice low and growling and barely sounding like his own.

"Derek!" she gasped, breathless as he curled over her and held her there, his chest flat against her back. He shook and strained, pushing up underneath her with his newfound arousal. She clawed at one of the steps above her to keep her balance, panting, moaning, mewling.

"See?" he whispered.

They said a long, guttural goodbye to the stairs.

FIN


End file.
